Jessika Kenney is an experimental vocalist and composer, as well as a participant in traditional Javanese gamelan and Persian radif-based music.
In 2015 she created a large-scale sound and video installation filling the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. Her solo compositions and performance can be heard on ATRIA (2015, Sige), as well as in duo collaborations with Eyvind Kang on Aestuarium (2011, Ideologic), the face of the earth (2012, Ideologic), At Temple Gate (2013, Weyrd Son), Live in Iceland (2012, self-released), and Reverse Tree (2016, Black Truffle).
Kenney is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, and has a Certificate in Philosophy from the New Centre for Research and Practice. She has studied sindhenan since first traveling to Indonesia in 1997, and studied radifs and poetry with Ostad Hossein Omoumi since 2004.
She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Korean American Coalition of Washington Artistic Achievement Award (2014), the James W Ray Distinguished Artist Award (2014), and the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival Best Vocalist (1992), which gave her the opportunity to sing with Lionel Hampton and his band.
Eyvind Kang is a composer, violist, and conductor who has has released many acclaimed albums on labels such as Tzadik, Ipecac, Abduction, and Ideologic Organ, and has worked on hundreds of recordings as an instrumentalist and arranger.
His compositions have been played by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony, the Seattle Chamber Players, MG_INC Orchestra, Coro di Camera di Modena, Orchestra del Teatro Communale di Bologna, and the Israeli Contemporary Players, among other ensembles.
As a violist he has been featured by a wide range of independent musicians including Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, the Sun City Girls, and Secret Chiefs. Kang has also performed solo pieces by Christian Wolff, Giacinto Scelsi, Ornette Coleman, Satyajit Ray, and Hanne Darboven. He recorded a beautiful 2001 album with Amir Koushkani, “On the Path of Love.”
Kang’s ongoing, genre-defying collaboration with composer and singer Jessika Kenney has been described as “serious, refined music” (The New York Times), taking the form of sound actions and installations, choral and orchestral works, and minimalist vocal and string arrangement, with two releases on Ideologic Organ (2011, 2013) curated by Stephen O’Malley.
He has studied North Indian Classical music under Dr. N. Rajam, and is currently a long time student of Classical Persian Music under Ostad Hossein Omoumi, with whom he has also performed and collaborated. His other principal teachers have been Julian Priester, Michael White, Jarrad Powell, and Janice Giteck at Cornish College of the Arts, and Dr. Regula Qureshi at the University of Alberta.