Yunohana Variations

Please join us for the Philadelphia premiere of Yunohana Variations, an engrossing new collaboration from three improvisational legends.

Yunohana Variations brings together a trio of experimental luminaries, each of whom has built their own towering reputation on transgressing stylistic and performative boundaries: drummer and singer YoshimiO from the mighty Boredoms, avant-garde composer and percussionist Susie Ibarra, and singer and synthesizer master Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, known to many as Lichens.

“Yunohana Variations is a great example of formless improv that is not just engaging but enthralling, perhaps even transcendent.”
—The Quietus

With Boredoms, OOIOO, and even the quiet Yoshimi and Yuka duo, YoshimiO favors a kind of ecstatic maximalism, music where something is always happy to be happening. Collaborator to the likes of John Zorn, David S. Ware, Wadada Leo Smith, and William Parker, Ibarra seems to stockpile fragments from a world of sound into her music, with rhythmic themes imported by her global curiosity. And Lowe specializes in phosphorescent drones, with radiant harmonies between man and machine. The three met for the first time in December of 2016 for a performance that turned out to be a singular evening of exquisite sound, resulting in their debut album “Flower of Sulphur” (Thrill Jockey).