Descended

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Karl Johnson Studios

Jean Laurenz in "Descended."

Jean Laurenz in "Descended."

media release: Part chamber music, part media art, part theater, this shape-shifting work owns as many haunting identities as its host-muse, Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904). Created and performed by Hearn’s Great-Great-Grand Niece, Jean Laurenz, composer Maria Finkelmeier, and percussionist Greg Jukes, the work explores the turbulent undertones and uncanny narratives of Hearn’s celebrated 19th century macabre stories, his magnetic pull in his contributions to American journalism, his interpretation of Japanese ghost stories, and his documentation of underrepresented American cultures.

Through this multi-media performance, audiences will create their own sensory entrance into life’s deepest questions; questions whose fibers weave into every ghost story, spiritual mantra, and subliminal experience - questions whose answers lie just beyond the grasp of cognition, discoverable only through a transformative portal beyond human touch.

Jean Laurenz, the assistant professor of trumpet at UW-Madison, is an eclectic musician who loves variety and collaboration. She primarily performs with Seraph Brass and the Wisconsin Brass Quintet. ***

Greg Jukes is a percussionist and narrator whose work focuses on blending music, acting, and dance in hybrid arts performances. He is a founding member of the international touring ensemble, The Fourth Wall and has created and narrated concerts with the Delaware Symphony, Evansville Philharmonic, and Columbia Orchestras and National Philharmonic.

Named a “one-woman dynamo” by the Boston Globe, Maria Finkelmeier is a percussionist, composer, professor, and digital media artist. Whether it’s scoring conceptual art films, creating dance beats out of audio samples from everyday life, to serving as both director and performer in multi-sensory productions, her work continually transcends both genre and medium.

Xuan is a new media artist, filmmaker, and pianist working at the intersection of music, visual art, and technology. A classical pianist with a passion for ‘visual music,’ she actively develops innovative, cross-disciplinary projects that broaden the immersive scope of new music and performance. Her work explores themes of femininity, power, inner conflict, and multicultural identity.