Grouper

Grouper is the solo project of Portland based musician/artist Liz Harris. Since the release of her recently acclaimed album A/A: Alien Observer, Grouper has scored the Sundance favoriteThe Perception of Moving Targets, and has been working on projects with both Tiny Vipers and Ninja Tune producer The Bug (aka Kevin Martin). Grouper's stately chorded songs have been described as "sounding as if they'd been made against a vast mountainside: voice and instruments-muted piano, spider strummed guitar and growling drone steeped in reverb and delay." Grouper's site-specific Violet Replacement performance in the rotunda will be comprised of long-form ambient pieces—tape loops, field recordings, Wurlitzer loops, and submerged atmospherics mixed and processed live from an array of dictaphones and tape players. The performance will be naturally resonant and customized for the space.

Julianna Barwick

Opening for Grouper, Brooklyn-based solo artist Julianna Barwick creates music which is at once orchestral, choral and meditative, using her voice as an instrument to create soaring, capacious chants and mystical invocations. Julianna has been compared to the likes of Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Panda Bear, Stars of the Lid, and Cocteau Twins. Building multiple loops and layers off on a single refrain, her live performances are totally captivating, moving and a gorgeous fit for the rotunda. Slate described a recent performance as "wordless songs with transporting powers," where "Julianna stood alone but sang like a choir of angels."

Presale for Guggenheim members begins Tues, March 20, at noon.
Public sale begins Wed, March 21, at noon.

Cold Cave

Heirs to the synthpop noir of New Order, Throbbing Gristle, Soft Cell, and Muslimgauze, Cold Cave are an experimental electronic pop group from Philadelphia and New York City who make melodic synthscapes with driving beats. They acknowledge the dark roots of synthesizer music as well as its potential for making the brightest pop with their hard songs celebrating the contradictory beauty of the human condition. Cold Cave strives for balance, between the ugly and the beautiful, between rupture and rapture. The songs on their debut album Love Comes Close have an immediacy that belies thought-provoking titles like The Laurels of Erotomania and The Trees Grew Emotions And Died. In this way they mark that transitional moment when synthesizer music went from a subversive device for sound collagists to a serious commercial force. Live, they are cerebral and savage, yet sweet and seductive.

Tickets go on sale April 3 for members and April 4 for nonmembers.

Zola Jesus with JG Thirlwell and the Mivos Quartet

Nika Danilova, the woman behind Zola Jesus, brings her epic, iconoclastic sound—full of dark evocative beauty—to the rotunda, performing a first time collaboration between Nika and esteemed composer JG Thirlwell. Thirlwell has arranged original compositions penned by Danilova to be performed with the Mivos string quartet. Zola Jesus's classically trained voice is commanding, rich, and silky and her music draws from industrial, classical, electronic, and experimental rock influences. From thumping ballads to electronic glitch, no sound goes unexplored. Building on the success of her highly acclaimed 2011 album Conatus (Sacred Bone), she has recently collaborated with David Lynch, M83, and Orbital. Zola Jesus's live performances have been called "near perfect rainy day music" (Washington Post) and onstage she has been described as "the physical depiction of a dove, of delicate deliverance paired with the strength of determination and purpose fixated in her sound" (Independent). JG Thirlwell has worked with Nick Cave, Foetus, Manorexia, The Venture Bros, Bang On a Can, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, and Kronos Quartet, among others.

Tickets go on sale April 17 for members and April 18 for nonmembers.