ITAI x Cello Joe @ Elixart Nevada City - A Special Sound Connections Pop-Up

Sound Connections - Nevada City Pop-Up 🦢

ITAI x Cello Joe 🦢❤️🦢

Live music, and electronic beats meet Ecstatic Dance!

From The Residency, LA's favorite intimate weekly experience!

Friday - 11.27.26 @ ElixArt, Nevada City

9:00 PM - Doors

On Friday, November 27th, the night after Thanksgiving, ITAI 🎷 (live saxophone and electronics) and Cello Joe 🎻 (cello, beatboxing and live looping) bring a night of live, fully improvised music to ElixArt in Nevada City. An alcohol-free evening of live electronic beats, dancing and good company, with a set that never happened before and will never happen again…

We call it "Sound Connections" as in - connection with others, with self, and with something bigger than all of us... Step into the Swan Lake Circle. ✨

Sound Connections comes to Nevada City:

Every Thursday in Los Angeles, I run The Residency: a weekly live music night where I sit face to face with a different artist and we create the soundtrack from scratch. This month we celebrate our 50th edition, and a week later we're bringing the same experience to Nevada City.

Nevada City has been on my map for a while. I spent Halloween 2024 here playing music, and I wanted to come back with something of my own, alongside an artist who calls this town home.

The night after Thanksgiving, whether or not you celebrate it, is a good night to be grateful for good company, good sound, and a room full of people who came to be together. No experience needed. You don't need to know the artists, the genre or the dance moves. Dance, sway, or sit back and listen, all of it counts.

About the musicians:

✨ ITAI 🎷🎹

ITAI (Itai Isenberg), Founder of The Residency & Saxophonist by training. He uses a multi-instrumental live looping setup to compose in real time an intentional movement experience. Born in Boston and raised in Israel, ITAI has a diverse musical background that includes Middle Eastern music, classical training as a child and the Rimon School of Jazz. After moving to the States he first made a living playing sax on the streets, went on to share stages with artists like Pato Banton, and perform with his solo, live act on some of the most celebrated stages in the world. After years of touring, he felt a pull to root back into a local community, and The Residency was born: a weekly space where he sits, "Swanning" face-to-face with a different artist each week and creates one-night-only Sound Connections that can't be replicated or

✨ Cello Joe 🎻

Cello Joe (Joey Chang) is a Nevada City-based cellist, beatboxer and vocalist who plays the cello while beatboxing, throat singing, singing and live looping, building fat beats from the cello and his own voice, live on stage. He calls it Classical Hip Hop, and his sound moves from dubstep to folk to rock to classical, with lyrics about sustainability, environmental justice and social awareness. Trained classically from age ten, he took his cello to the street, earned a scholarship at Berklee College of Music, and has since performed in more than a dozen countries and at festivals including Burning Man, Lightning in a Bottle, Sziget and Symbiosis. He has shared stages with Joan Baez, and he bills himself as the world's first long-distance musical bike touring cellist, with over 10,000 miles ridden across North America, Europe and Australia.

Repeated.

What to expect?

🕘 9:00 PM - Doors Open (arrive early, grab an elixir, settle in, connect)

🎶 10:00 PM - Music Begins (continuous flow until we are done)

🥤 Alcohol-free night - elixirs, teas, kava and mocktails from the ElixArt bar

📍 ElixArt - 203 York St, Nevada City, CA

*** The Dance floor can be a soft and vulnerable space. We like to be present with each other therefore we request it being a "No Phone Zone".

💬 You are part of the experience, please dance, scream, sing as long as you respect other people's space and experience as well <3

***If you want to add an instrument please coordinate in advance since the curation of the night is very intentional.

🤫 Let's keep deep conversations off the dancing areas... It's not meant to be a "no talking" environment and most people are trying to connect with the music in a non-verbal way. A great place for deeper conversations is the ElixArt elixir bar (:

ElixArt 🍵

Since 2012, ElixArt has been Nevada City's home for connection without alcohol. It began with free tea in a downtown art gallery and grew into one of the country's first elixir bars: part herbal apothecary, part botanical lounge, serving kava, cacao, teas, tonics and botanical mocktails in an art-filled space. It's built around the same idea as Sound Connections: people showing up, present, in good company.

The Story of The Residency - Sound Connections:

From ITAI: "After years of touring the world and playing on the biggest stages I could imagine, I started looking for something deeper. Indeed there is real magic in playing in front of big crowds, yet I was craving something, an ongoing connection, to root into my community, and for that, I knew I needed a consistent local experience, which is how The Residency was born.

Every Thursday, we feature one very special guest artist, sitting across from me as we create the soundtrack for the night from scratch. On November 27th in Nevada City, that artist is Cello Joe.

What is Swanning? Like two swans facing each other in a moment of deep connection, this allows us to share and respond, creating something raw, alive, and unrepeatable. In this format, the audience surrounds the face-to-face artists which forms a circle that makes everyone part of the experience. Step into the circle (:"

Much Love,

ITAI, Cello Joe & The Residency Swans ❤️