TAK Ensemble will perform two works written for the ensemble by Weston Olencki and Michelle Lou, each integrating bespoke electronics to create soundscapes that span ecstatically shimmering to hauntingly subterranean. 

when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean by Weston Olencki is a performance project engaging with the legacies of early scientific modernity and their relationships to experimental sound practices and archival preservation. Borrowing its title from the psychogeographical excursions of W.G. Sebald, when the great fires… takes its own journey through real and imagined histories of electricity, using myriad perspectives and mythologies around electrical force to re-enchant its ubiquitous presence throughout American industrial, spiritual, and vernacular narratives. The work posits an “almost-could-have-happened” scenario set in North America around the turn of the 20th century: when electricity, the very force that undergirds our current digitized reality, remained mysteriously nascent in a space of imagination and experimentation as a new unwieldy, yet magical phenomenon.

IN A FOREST is a rare vocal work by Rome Prize winner, Michelle Lou. The immersive, slow-moving, 40-minute composition creates an 8-channel spatialized forest, spinning an ecology of synthetic and organic sound.  Lou’s original text for the work crafts a deep sense of mourning and less with a moment of lightness and hope as the work concludes. The ensemble, treated with live processing, weaves thickly pulled harmonic textures into an almost-drone space, with shifting rhythms that sculpt at once a sense of geological time, and a haunting grunge song.

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Regarded as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances “that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The WIRE), and “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR). 

TAK is a mixed-quintet committed to musical exploration and experimentation and dedicated to commissioning new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists. They have premiered hundreds of works to date since its founding in 2013. Recent highlighted collaborations include large-scale works by Eric Wubbels, Jessie Cox, Qiujiang Levi Lu, Michelle Lou, Tyshawn Sorey, and Weston Olencki. The group has performed internationally at IntACT Festival (Thailand), Music Current Festival (Ireland), Cluster Festival (Canada), Harpa Concert Hall (Iceland), and the Delian Academy (Greece), among many others, with upcoming performances in Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, and Latvia.

TAK is: Laura Cocks, flute; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; Ellery Trafford, percussion. 

About the Artists

Michelle Lou composes mainly in the realm of electro-acoustic music, both in hardware and in computer based forms. She has also created large scale sound installations which are often performative and collaborative. She performs and improvises on acoustic and electric bass, electric guitar, and on laptop and various electronics.

Her work has been presented at Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, The Festival of New American Music (Sacramento), the MATA Festival (New York City), The 66th American Music Festival at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., The Rainy Days Festival (Luxembourg), Ultima Festival (Oslo), Chance and Circumstance (Brooklyn), Klub Katarakt (Hamburg), Klangwerkstatt and MaerzMusik (both in Berlin), amongst others.

She received degrees in double bass performance and music composition from UC San Diego with additional studies at The Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy (double bass) and The UDK in Graz, Austria (composition), the latter on a Fulbright Fellowship. Graduate studies culminated in a doctorate in composition from Stanford University. Michelle teaches as part of the composition faculty at UC San Diego.

Weston Olencki is a musician and composer from South Carolina, living now in Berlin.

Their projects position musical instruments as sites of cultural inscription, working fluidly between experimental sound, traditional musics, and their various space/time(s).

Weston has previously performed at the Borealis Festival, Counterflows, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Lampo, Musica Nova (as a soloist with the Helsinki Philharmonic), Märzmusik, Black Mountain College, philharmonie luxembourg, HKW, Festival Musica, the American Academy in Rome, Roulette Intermedium, Jalopy Theatre, Fylkingen, Pioneer Works, and more. They have held guest residencies at the University of Huddersfield, Harvard, NYU, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern, and have been a visiting artist at CalArts (2018), Stoveworks (2023), suddenlyLISTEN (2024), and EMS Stockholm (2025). 

Their solo discography includes Verd Mont (SUPERPANG, 2021), Old Time Music (Tripticks Tapes, 2022), pearls ground down to powder (Full Spectrum, 2024),  I went to the dance (Longform Editions, 2024) and Broadsides/Two Postscripts (Outside Time, 2025), with other recording projects released by PAGANS, Dinzu Artefacts, Lobby Art, Out of Your Head, Sound American, HatHut, and Astral Spirits. They are an active member of RAGE Thormbones and Apparat, and perform in many contexts on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, and electronics.