Improvised Music Series: Ken Ueno (Solo & Ensemble), BananaAcid

Ken Ueno presents an evening of solo & ensemble performance. The program foregrounds Ueno’s extended vocal techniques, embodied movement practices, and exploration of resonance, breath, and physical gesture as compositional material. Combining improvisation, experimental sound, and person-specific approaches to performance, the event moves between intimate sonic textures and visceral physicality, creating a space where voice, body, and environment become deeply intertwined. We welcome Ken from Berkeley, CA, where he’ll be joined by local artists with Bay Area ties: Tim Daisy, Kim Nucci, and Ben Zucker.
Banana Acid is an improvising ensemble made up of Aaron Kaufman-Levine, Caroline Jesalva, Erez Dessel, Garrett Frees, and Tyler Wagner. Banana Acid is committed to the practice of spontaneous composition. Their unique sonic language synthesizes deep individual studies of various music traditions, including early jazz, free jazz, classical, electro-acoustic, and folk music.
8:30 pm: BananaAcid
Erez Dessel - piano
Garrett Frees - saxophones
Aaron Kaufman-Levine - saxophones
Caroline Jesalva - violin, voice
Tyler Wagner - bass
9:30 pm: Ken Ueno Solo + Ensemble
Ken Ueno - voice
Tim Daisy - drums, percussion
Kim Nucci - electronics
Ben Zucker - vibraphone, trumpet
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
About The Artists
Ken Ueno (he/him) is a composer, vocalist, sound artist, and scholar whose work has been presented internationally by leading ensembles, orchestras, museums, and festivals. A recipient of the Rome Prize and Berlin Prize, he is Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley.
Tim Daisy is a Chicago-based drummer, composer, and presenter
who has been an active member of the international improvised
music scene since the late 1990s. His move and subsequent immersion into Chicago's fertile creative music scene in 1997 have given him the opportunity to perform, compose, tour, and record with some of the city’s most acclaimed musicians and ensembles. Tim has also contributed original compositions and improvisations for modern dance, various sound installations, documentary films, and podcasts.
Kim Nucci (Chicago/Oakland) is a media artist, composer/performer, and technologist researching the cybernetic body's relationships with technology/our instruments. Their performance practice is invested in ritualism and trance states in improvisation.
Ben Zucker engages in acts of creative juxtaposition and speculation as a composer, audiovisual artist, and multi-instrumentalist. Acclaimed as a "master of improvisation" (IMPOSE Magazine), and “more than a little bit remarkable” (Free Jazz Blog), they have contributed to experimental music scenes across North America and the UK with “stirring compositions…built on a lifetime of musical curiosity” (Chicago Reader), as well as albums, multimedia situations, and frequent performances on vibraphone, brass, voice, and electronics.
Banana Acid is an improvising ensemble made up of Aaron Kaufman-Levine, Caroline Jesalva, Erez Dessel, Garrett Frees, and Tyler Wagner. Banana Acid is committed to the practice of spontaneous composition, influenced and shaped by their studies at New England Conservatory of Music. Their unique sonic language synthesizes deep individual studies of various music traditions, including early jazz, free jazz, classical, electro-acoustic, and folk music. Their recording and performance techniques draw on modernist and postmodernist cultural movements, including surrealism and deconstructivism. A creative and adventurous force in the world of the avant-garde, their sound is uncompromising, and their musical approach pushes at the boundaries of free jazz.
Within the last two years, all members have moved to Chicago where they actively perform, record, curate, and present improvised music. Activities include creating and presenting a multidisciplinary music festival featuring all original music by Chicago musicians; curating multiple series’ with visual and experimental video artists; presenting the Banana Acid Fruit Stand Variety Show (an exhibition of visual art and music). Their debut album Unio Mystica was released June 2025 on cassette tape.