Sarah Hennies and Tristan Kasten-Krause, Prisoner's Cinema
Cost
Where
Gridley Chapel
36 Furnace Bank Road
Wassaic, NY 12592
When
Saturday, November 1, 2025
4–6:30 PM
Who
Please join us for the world premiere of Prisoner's Cinema, a collaboratively composed and performed work by Sarah Hennies and Tristan Kasten-Krause with double bass, percussion, and a single candle flame. This piece explores the links between sight, hearing, and perception and is partly inspired by “trataka,” a style of yogi purification meditation that involves staring at a single point (such as a candle flame) for extended durations. The audience will be instructed to fix their gaze on the flame of the candle while Hennies and Kasten-Krause perform a work of high sustaining tones. The instruments are closely tuned to one another to produce beating effects and psychoacoustic phenomena such as “three-dimensional” sound, where it feels as though the music is moving through space. Hennies and Kasten-Krause believe in a style of adventurous music that is both challenging and accessible and that offers any potential audience member an experience that may change and broaden their experience of music, sound, the world, and themselves.
Each 30-minute performance will admit 15 audience members. Advance RSVP is required and timeliness is expected.
This project was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
· · ·
About the Artists
Sarah Hennies is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic ensemble music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship, a 2019 Grants to Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound rom the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received additional support from the Creative Work Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. She has performed internationally and the 2023 large-ensemble work “Motor Tapes” was featured as part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial. She was an artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project in 2022 is currently a visiting assistant professor of music at Bard College.
Tristan Kasten-Krause is a bassist and composer living in Brooklyn, New York whose work enlarges the minutiae of close tones and subtle gestures. As a bassist he has been credited with lending his “low-end authority to vital New York institutions” (The New Yorker) and praised for his “heavenly” (The Guardian) original compositions. His work exploring duration and expanded time has led to multiple sets on the Hudson Basilica’s 24-Hour Drone festival, performances of extended, endurance-based works with extreme metal band Scarcity, and the premiere of a marathon 6-hour opera (2023’s Stranger Love) for the LA Phil. Over the last decade Tristan has worked with adventurous and experimental artists such as Alvin Lucier, LEYA, Denardo Coleman, David First, Man Forever and Henry Threadgill. He has served as bassist in contemporary chamber ensembles including Argento New Music, Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, Ensemble Signal, and Contemporaneous.
The duo of Tristan Kasten-Krause and Sarah Hennies works collaboratively to compose large-scale compositions employing drones, psychoacoustic phenomena, and extended techniques on double bass and an array of gongs, bells, vibraphone, and other percussion instruments. Their work includes delicate interplay of high-pitched tones, deep resonances from bass tones and gongs, and patient, slowly unfolding extended durations that evoke a mysterious sonic landscape.
Event Details
Sarah Hennies and Tristan Kasten-Krause, Prisoner's Cinema
Cost
Where
Gridley Chapel
36 Furnace Bank Road
Wassaic, NY 12592
When
Saturday, November 1, 2025
4–6:30 PM
Who
Please join us for the world premiere of Prisoner's Cinema, a collaboratively composed and performed work by Sarah Hennies and Tristan Kasten-Krause with double bass, percussion, and a single candle flame. This piece explores the links between sight, hearing, and perception and is partly inspired by “trataka,” a style of yogi purification meditation that involves staring at a single point (such as a candle flame) for extended durations. The audience will be instructed to fix their gaze on the flame of the candle while Hennies and Kasten-Krause perform a work of high sustaining tones. The instruments are closely tuned to one another to produce beating effects and psychoacoustic phenomena such as “three-dimensional” sound, where it feels as though the music is moving through space. Hennies and Kasten-Krause believe in a style of adventurous music that is both challenging and accessible and that offers any potential audience member an experience that may change and broaden their experience of music, sound, the world, and themselves.
Each 30-minute performance will admit 15 audience members. Advance RSVP is required and timeliness is expected.
This project was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the Artists
Sarah Hennies is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic ensemble music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship, a 2019 Grants to Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a 2016 fellowship in music/sound rom the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has received additional support from the Creative Work Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. She has performed internationally and the 2023 large-ensemble work “Motor Tapes” was featured as part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial. She was an artist-in-residence at the Wassaic Project in 2022 is currently a visiting assistant professor of music at Bard College.
Tristan Kasten-Krause is a bassist and composer living in Brooklyn, New York whose work enlarges the minutiae of close tones and subtle gestures. As a bassist he has been credited with lending his “low-end authority to vital New York institutions” (The New Yorker) and praised for his “heavenly” (The Guardian) original compositions. His work exploring duration and expanded time has led to multiple sets on the Hudson Basilica’s 24-Hour Drone festival, performances of extended, endurance-based works with extreme metal band Scarcity, and the premiere of a marathon 6-hour opera (2023’s Stranger Love) for the LA Phil. Over the last decade Tristan has worked with adventurous and experimental artists such as Alvin Lucier, LEYA, Denardo Coleman, David First, Man Forever and Henry Threadgill. He has served as bassist in contemporary chamber ensembles including Argento New Music, Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, Ensemble Signal, and Contemporaneous.
The duo of Tristan Kasten-Krause and Sarah Hennies works collaboratively to compose large-scale compositions employing drones, psychoacoustic phenomena, and extended techniques on double bass and an array of gongs, bells, vibraphone, and other percussion instruments. Their work includes delicate interplay of high-pitched tones, deep resonances from bass tones and gongs, and patient, slowly unfolding extended durations that evoke a mysterious sonic landscape.
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