Heart Sound: Moor Mother and Tcheser Holmes Honor Milford Graves

On the occasion of Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency at ICA LA, musicians Moor Mother and Tcheser Holmes celebrate Milford Graves with a special performance at the museum.

Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother) is a national and international touring musician, poet, visual artist, and Professor of Composition at the USC Thornton School of Music. Her work speaks to many genres from electronic to free jazz and classical music.

Camae’s work has been featured at the Guggenheim Museum, The Met, Carnegie Mellon and Carnegie Hall, Documenta 15, the Berlin Jazz Festival, and the Glastonbury Festival. Through the lens and practice of Black Quantum Futurism, the art she makes is a statement for the future, as well as a way to honor the present and its historic connections to a multitude of past realities and future outcomes. She specializes in practical concepts, but works in speculation and historical concepts. Moor Mother creates soundscapes using field sounds and archival sound collage in order to create sonic maps that allow us to journey to our buried histories and futures. She is an artist who, through writing, music, film, visual art, socially engaged art, and creative research, explores personal, cultural, familial, and communal cycles of experience and solutions for transforming oppressive linear temporalities into empowering, alternative temporalities. Her work seeks to inspire practical techniques of vision and agency against a forever expanding re-conquering of land, housing, and health in Black communities.

Camae is a Pew Fellow, a The Kitchen Inaugural Emerging Artist Awardee, a Leeway Transformation Award, a Blade of Grass Fellow as part of Black Quantum Futurism, and a Rad Girls Philly Artist of the Year. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange, WORM! Rotterdam residency, and the Creative Capital and CERN collide residency with Black Quantum Futurism.

Tcheser Holmes, a drummer from NY who grew up submerged in Brooklyn’s “Afro-centric” culture. Here he was introduced to an abundance of music (rock, house, hip-hop, etc). At an early age, Tcheser played djembe with African Drum ensembles; this is where he was introduced to the drum-set and concepts pertaining to jazz. After studying at the New England Conservatory, Tcheser moved back to New York and remains a fixture in the jazz community. Currently, Tcheser is still playing locally and touring with the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements (which includes Moor Mother), as well as Jamie Branch C’est Trio, appearances with the Sun RA Orchestra, Marshall Allen, and many other acts. Most recently, Tcheser was selected for honoring Terri Lynn Carrington’s award winning album and book New Standards at NYC Winter Jazz Fest 23.