An evening with Nels Cline and CUP

Please join us for a very rare live-streaming experience featuring performances from the electrifying guitarist Nels Cline (solo) and CUP, the duo of Nels and multi-instrumentalist Yuka C. Honda of Cibo Matto.

Guitar explorer Nels Cline is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career — spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental — is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. Beyond Wilco, Cline performs in a duo project with guitarist Julian Lage in addition to a quartet, The Nels Cline 4 (featuring Lage plus bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Tom Rainey), performs as Stretch Woven with percussionist Scott Amendola, leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Amendola plus bassist Trevor Dunn and percussionist Cyro Baptista) and plays with Stained Radiance (an improvisational live project with performance painter Norton Wisdom). Cline also periodically presents concerts of his concept album Lovers, which involves a 17-person ensemble and collaborates dozens of composers/improvisers.

CUP partners Nels Cline’s genre-bending guitar work with the electronic rhythms and experimental grooves of his wife, Yuka C. Honda, best know as half of the heady trip-hop duo Cibo Matto. Prepare for an adventurous performance that is both playful and aggressive, wandering and infectious. Philadelphia audiences are no stranger to the amazing eclecticism of Cline’s artistry, most recently manifested in Ars Nova’s presentation of his big band love letter to the city, “Lovers (for Philadelphia).” The couple shared the stage on that occasion as well as on others, including a memorable appearance by Honda with the Nels Cline Singers at Johnny Brenda’s.

Sponsors

Special thanks to our sponsors who helped make this event possible:

Bruce and Ellen Asam, Leigh and Daniel Caputo, Kate Charlow and Andrew Laughland, Reed Goldstein and Sharon Ezersky, Laura Huggett, Mike Lang, Vanessa and Michael O’Mara, Lila Perilloux, Marc Prizer, Frank Silvestry, and Marjorie Somers