Free, online reservation required.

The PHI Foundation is pleased to present Stretching the Unison, a performance organized by Adam Kinner, featuring Erin Hill, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, and Frédérique Roy.  

To play together, to feel time and pitch from the same position, to be in unison, is one of the foundations of musical performance. And yet, how together we actually are, in general or in a particular passage, is a matter of perspective, positionality, and context. What may seem to be unison at one moment can appear disjointed at another. Unison in music can be thought of as the feeling of listening to another that is also oneself, with all the misrecognition and disidentification inherent in such a formulation. 

Adam Kinner, an artist who works across performance, music, and dance, has invited three artists—Erin Hill, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, and Frédérique Roy—to play music with him that focuses on the question of unison and its limits. While the music proceeds from a desire to be together, to blanket one another in the warmth of each other’s tone, it also readily gives in to the limits of this togetherness and the desire to flee when you hear yourself reflected back. In the resonant space of the PHI Foundation, the artists will stretch the unison until it breaks, or holds them together.