Drum Major Instinct x Katherine Young | June 21 7PM

Drum Major Instinct x Katherine Young

Presented by Lamplight AVL at Drop of Sun Studios

Lamplight AVL invites you to Drop of Sun Studios for a behind the scenes peak at a recording by Drum Major Instinct and Katherine Young. A limited number of guests will sit quietly in the live room, on the mezzanine, or in the control room to experience this live recording event.

reserve your tickets here

 

banner image by: John Ramspott

Drum Major Instinct is an experimental music duo from Asheville, North Carolina. Jeff Arnal plays (mostly) percussion and Curt Cloninger plays (mostly) modular synthesizer. The Wire describes Jeff’s drumming as a “highly original concept” having “a balletic sense of time and imaginative deployment of colour;” and Byron Coley says Curt’s modular synthesis “moves like blocks of radioactive adobe being shifted around by architects in space suits.” But, of course, nothing is ever that straightforward. The resultant music is about waves of energy, patterns within patterns (within patterns), sounds from the natural world, and running the voodoo down. Their self-titled first release is on Mahakala Music (2022) and their latest 2025 LP (entitled “Almost Nothing”) is on Haunted Apparatus.

Joining them for this live performance is Katherine Young. As a bassoonist and improviser, Katherine Young amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She performs as a soloist, in ad hoc improvised groups, and with projects such as Beautifulish (duo with Sam Scranton) and Architeuthis Walks on Land (duo with Amy Cimini). Her debut solo album garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”). She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her quartet Pretty Monsters self-titled debut, a duo recording with Anthony Braxton, and the multi-movement work “Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight” (Parlour Tapes+) created with violinist Austin Wulliman of the JACK Quartet. Katherine is based in Atlanta, where she teaches composition, electronic music, and improvisation at Emory University. In 2021, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition. As a scholar, she researches the incorporation of idiosyncratic electronics and improvisation in contemporary notated music.