Marisa Anderson & Jim White

Join Ars Nova Workshop for a performance by the adventurous duo of folk guitarist Marisa Anderson and avant-garde drummer Jim White, at Solar Myth on Sunday, December 11.

Jim White and Marisa Anderson share an abounding appetite for musical exploration. White, as a member of Dirty Three and Xylouris White, is well known for his creative and idiosyncratic drumming. His singular abilities have also led to collaborations with Cat Power, PJ Harvey, and Bill Callahan, among others. Anderson’s prolific output as a solo performer, her mastery of traditional folk and blues forms, and her abilities to make them entirely her own has established her as one of the most exciting and forward-thinking guitarists of the last decade.

“Much of the grace in the best not-quite-rock, not-quite-folk music since the mid-1990s—Cat Power, Beth Orton, Smog, Dirty Three, Nina Nastasia, Bonnie Prince Billy—is attributable to Jim White, who played with them all.”
— NPR

“Marisa Anderson defies classification.”
— The Washington Post

The Quickening

The debut collaborative album by White and Anderson, The Quickening (2020, Thrill Jockey), features a set of searching duets that reimagine the landscape of American music, melding traditional forms including blues, folk, and gospel with more experimental fare, from minimalist drones to modern classical ventures. The idea for their pairing developed while on the road together in 2015, with Anderson playing solo and White playing with Xylouris White. The Quickening was recorded between improvised sessions at the Portland studio Type Foundry and Mexico City’s Estudios Noviembres, a time capsule of a studio from the 70s that had been largely closed before some young engineers took it over. The “slight disorientation” of working in less familiar environments mirrored their willingness to plunge headfirst into exploring new sonic territory together. The duo did not rehearse or perform together before the recording sessions; as White puts it, “it’s good to suspend disbelief at this stage of playing.”