Name: March 2025 Frequency Fridays
Start: 2025-03-07T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Old First Presbyterian Church

On the evening of Friday, March 7th, we are delighted to present experimental musician Marguerite Sissie (FL), Thom Elliott’s solo project Thom & thee Bedlamites (MI), the Blumen duo consisting of multi-genre pianist Richard Blumenthal (OH) and percussionist James Knoerl (NY) with John Cairns (CMH) on visuals, and jazz improviser LA Jenkins (CMH) with Krista Faist (CMH) on visuals. Doors 7:30pm, show begins at 8:00pm sharp. $9.25 prepaid, $10 at the door.
Supporters of our 2024-2025 season include the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the Ohio Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Columbus Foundation.
About the artists:
Marguerite Sissie is a visual artist and experimental musician born in Louisiana and presently residing in Florida. She is an active member of the Electronic Cottage collective, on Dog Park Records and a Certified Sound and Vibrational Therapist. She is inspired by musicians such as Felicia Atkinson, John Cage, Vivi Vassilea, Ying Hseuh Chen, Bonnie Whiting, Ami Yoshida, and Anna Homler.
Thom & thee Bedlamites: new project of Thom Elliott, long time member of the Michigan noise musick community, formerly of post-industrial band Gates of Janus, with albums and appearances on several labels including Tribe Tapes, American Tapes, Hermitage Tapes, Ecstatic Peace, Easy Listening Records, Green Records and Tapes, Pleasuredome Tapes and more. T&tB perform unexpected exercises in maximalist synthesizer and tormented psychology, frightening intensity on existential themes through post-industrial negative psychedelia. New album Bad Choices forthcoming 2025.
A creative outlet for both individual expression and collaborative mischief, Blumen is the unification of pianist Richard M Blumenthal & drummer James Knoerl as they make music to try and confuse each other. With a sound that avoids landing cleanly in any genre, the duo’s output takes cues equally from twinkly mathrock rhythms, modern jazz’s modal harmonies, and the precision of progrock & metal, while successfully avoiding any particular audience overall. Their music has been described as “astonishingly complex and tightly played music” as well as “SO unpleasant to listen to”. Blumen’s fourth release “The Cove” is an album of short vignettes of sound that, in contrast to previous releases, eschews typical song structures in favor of briefly exploring different sonorites and energies across its 12 tracks. Meeting by chance during the heyday of the internet, Richard & James have performed music and spent time together in a number of settings over the past decade, whether writing and touring with progressive metal band Aviations, recording on albums of original music as Blumen and With a Smile, or as session musicians that overlap clients ranging from lofi to death metal to even helping record backing tracks for a children’s musical. Outside of lucrative niche music pursuits, Richard is a classical collaborative pianist based in Ohio and James is a full time touring & session drummer/editor/mix engineer based in NYC.
John Cairns grew up in a very small city on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. It was there, being influenced by the industries and nature of Lake Erie, that he learned the arts under the tutelage of his Grandmother, Eleanor Fry. John gained an appreciation for the fine arts while making a living working mainly in the commercial and industrial arts of Cleveland during his early career. In 2006, Cairns movedto Columbus, Ohio and received an Associate of Applied Science in Graphic Communication Technologies from Columbus State Community College; then went on to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Ohio State University with a focus on Art and Technology. Upon receiving his degree from OSU, John continued his education in the arts and technology by earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Art from the University of Cincinnati. John Cairns currently lives in Grove City, Ohio with his wife, Holly and their two cats. John is Chair of the Illustration Department and an Assistant Professor in Illustration, Fine Arts, Core Studios, and Graduate Studies at the Columbus College of Art & Design. He continues his original craft of drawing and loves to make videos/animations, tinker with electronics, explore computer language, collect visual data, in addition to researching interaction in art.
L.A. Jenkins is a modern jazz guitarist and composer. His relaxed approach to his art is always about the music and the collaboration he forges with other like minded musicians. Originally a self-taught guitarist, he eventually studied music composition-specifically the harmolodic approach to song composition ala Ornette Coleman. His compositional work follows in the legacy of Anthony Braxton, Bill Frisell, Bill Laswell, Leroy Jenkins, Ornette Coleman and David Torn. He wishes “to advance the ideal of artistic freedom being unhindered by cultural assumptions about the individual and enforced as limiting expectations as it relates to categories and genre.” Thus he dips his “toe” (so to speak) into many styles of creative music. L. A’s, current interest is playing in the genre of modern jazz/free improvisation, ambient/ experimental, avant-garde, and film compositions. L.A. has collaborated with percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, bassist Tom Abbs, and saxophonist Michael Cary/ Gary Thompson, drummer Ryan Jewell and multi- instruments Hasan Abdur-Razzaq to name a few notable collaborations.
VR/AI/moving image artist Krista Faist’s physical work is largely comprised of watercolor crayon and reductive wax paintings on decorative plate glass, as well as intricate sculptures made from found objects and junk store items. With both mediums, she has sought to represent aesthetic over-stimulation that leads to expansiveness of imagination and wonder, much like that experienced in childhood when one visits a candy shop. As a child, she had a strong desire to see all colors and textures at once, including colors never seen before. With each project, she sets out to re-capture this feeling of simulated desire and satisfaction. She believes that this desire to satiate our hunger for wonderment with consumerist impulses is innately human, and her aim is to bring this incongruence to light via her immersive, audio reactive, and VR works.