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Tragic Magic finds Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore, two of contemporary ambient and experimental music’s most celebrated composers, synthesizing their respective crafts within the walls of Philharmonie de Paris, given access to the extraordinary instrument collection of the Musée de la Musique in partnership with the French label InFiné. The collaborative album, co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), came together in just nine days, a testament to the “musical telepathy,” as Barwick puts it, that has developed between the two artists over the years, traveling the world as friends and tourmates. Sessions crossed improvisation with loose ideas they arrived in Paris with from Los Angeles, shortly after the January 2025 wildfires. Still reeling for their community, the two artists embraced a divine setting, feeling deeply cared for by their hosts and overwhelmed by the beauty and history at their fingertips.
Lattimore selected three harps tracing the evolution of the instrument from 1728 to 1873, and Barwick chose several analog synthesizers that have shaped decades of exploratory music, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5, among other treasures. Together in freeform dialogue, voice and instrument, they render a meditation on tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience. Tragic Magic features seven immersive, evocative songs guided by the human spirit. Intimate, grounded in friendship, earthly yet cosmic, and part of a greater continuum, speaking to the solace of artistry that’s lifted us for generations.
Tara Clerkin Trio will open the show! Not far off two years from the day, Bristol's Tara Clerkin Trio return to World of Echo and the EP format for a five song collection of quixotic, emotional redolence. But do not mistake their absence for inertia. If their musical output has been a little sparse during those in-between years, limited to a few solo ventures and an astonishing ten minute long piece as a trio, their time has otherwise been richly spent: continuous writing and recording, extensive live performances across Europe and Japan, a cultivation of local and more far-flung artistic connections (musical and otherwise), and a monthly NTS show that, through the voice of others, speaks most obviously to their own unorthodox interests. It's the conflux of that winding activity that leads indirectly to On The Turning Ground, 26 minutes of probing, thoughtful composition that draws from no one specific source.
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Event Venue
1620 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh, NC, United States, North Carolina 27608
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
