The 3rd installment of Hunt’s 4-part experimental series of shows called The SongCraft Sessions. She has designed the series as a laboratory for testing out new songs and arrangement ideas and collaborating with fellow Kansas City musicians.
Session #3 features guest artist opener, Simon Fink. The performances will also feature longtime co-conspirator, multi-instrumentalist Stas’ Heaney as well as an occasional rotating band of local musicians. The format will include an opening set from the guest artist songwriter followed by a multi-song collaboration with Kelly and culminating with a long set of Hunt’s own music, freely explored and configured as she sees fit.
DOORS 6 PM
SHOW 7 PM
$10 (Advance tickets available at therecordbar.com)
Final Session:
Wed. May 22 (featuring Sara Morgan)
ABOUT SIMON FINK:
Session #3 features guest artist opener, Simon Fink. Simon is a composer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. His music has been called “delicate, intriguing, shadowy, (and) suddenly new” (NPR) and “refreshing” (The Kansas City Star). He brings a wide-ranging background and classically-trained ear to genres from opera to electronic music to the American folk song. He currently writes and performs with the folk/bluegrass quartet Under the Big Oak Tree.
Simon has received honors from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the MacDowell Colony, and the New York Youth Symphony, and his works have been featured by The Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Aspen Music Festival, and the Staunton Music Festival. His past collaborations include projects with Grammy winning musicians eighth blackbird, the Pacifica Quartet, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Kevin McMillan, and Ian Howell, as well as Uniondocs, Ensemble Iberica, and Tunisia88.
In 2009 Simon became the first composer to win the prestigious ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award for a piece involving live-realized electronic sounds (Electric Pastoral). In 2011 he was awarded a prize for his music-architectural collaboration, Dock & Load, at the Music in Architecture — Architecture in Music Symposium at the University of Texas. In 2017 the Myanmar Music Festival commissioned two songs from him that toured throughout that country to great response.
Simon began violin lessons at age three when some friends found an abandoned 1/8th sized violin on a bus and offered it to his parents. In order to secure a place in a friend’s band in middle school, he took up the bass guitar and later the guitar, mandolin, and banjo. In high school he studied violin at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with Kevin Lawrence. He holds a B.A. in History and a B.M. in Composition from Rice University and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Chicago where he was a Mellon Fellow and studied with Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszynska, and Howard Sandroff.
Simon has served on the teaching faculty at the University of Chicago, William Jewell College, and Missouri Western State University and on the boards of newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and KcEMA (Kansas City Electronic Music & Arts Alliance).
ABOUT KELLY:
Hunt’s stellar debut album “Even The Sparrow” is already getting rave advance reaction prior to it’s international release on May 17th, 2019:
“Hunt applies her haunting voice and evocative banjo playing to songs that build on the work of contemporary masters like Gillian Welch.” - THE KANSAS CITY STAR.
“...the combination of Hunt’s exceptional voice and exquisitely spare instrumentation is stunning.” - Bill Brownlee THERE STANDS THE GLASS.
Kelly will be on tour in support of “Even The Sparrow” throughout 2019.