Acousmo: Chris Ryan Williams, Siavash Namehshiri

Doors: 20:30
Concerts: 21:30

Address: Allmendstrasse 93, 8041 Zürich , Halle D, First Floor 

Acousmo is a concert and sound art series focused on intentional listening. It offers a space for concentrated engagement with live sound and aims to counter the fast and superficial consumption of music. In this cycle, Acousmo introduces a new format: each evening begins with two solo performances by musicians or sound artists that are curated by the community. These are followed by an improvised set where both artists perform together. The program concludes with DJ sets.

Chris Ryan Williams (NY)

Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. His work takes the form of electroacoustic composition and performance installation and deals with decoding family history, ambience, and time-space compression. His debut EP ‘Live’ received praise from Jazz Right Now and The Quietus for “dazzling collaged pieces that ricochet between improvised passages and written material” (Peter Margasak, The Quietus). He has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, has been commissioned by WasteLAnd and International Contemporary Ensemble.

He has been in residence with BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Musik Installationen Nürnberg and is 2023 American Composers Forum Fellow and 2024 Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. He has collaborated with creators including Eyvind Kang, Patrick Shiroishi, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Imani Dennison, Wendy Eisenberg, Luke Stewart, Pink Siifu, and Marjani Forte-Saunders. 

Williams also has an ongoing collaboration with cellist Lester St. Louis under the moniker HxH, a duo which has “embraced the challenge of bringing laptop instrumentalism into a wide personal world by making sounds that are at once art-minded and accessible, and true to the tenets of spontaneous composition and “social music,” (Piotr Orlov, Pioneer Works)

Siavash Namehshiri (ZH)

Siavash Namehshiri is a Kurdish musician, sound artist, collaborator, curator and community organiser from Iran/Rojhalat based in Zurich. His work focuses primarily on the processing of processes – an exploration of artistic creation as an evolving dialogue. Through his sonic creations, Siavash channels memories, using sound and noise to articulate stories. He remains deeply engaged with the intersectional dimensions of sound practices, resisting the cultivation of totalitarian and monolingual artistic narratives. His work challenges the dominance of Western frameworks and written histories that erase the diversity of global contexts, oral and verbal transmission, and intergenerational knowledge.
In his latest release, Cycling Re-en-generations, he delves into a long-term collaborative process with various artists, using improvisation to compose and reconstruct sonic experiences. The multi-channel spatial piece reflects on practices of togetherness, where collective consensus makes room for individual needs. Siavash has initiated and participated in various collaborative projects, experimenting with different artistic contexts in both studio and live performances. He works with samples and samplers, software such as Ableton, Max MSP and Reaper, as well as modular analogue and digital synthesizers. His performances often incorporate concrete technical methods such as microphony techniques, soundscape recordings and other experimental approaches.