Jessika Kenney is an award-winning vocalist and composer working for the last 25 years in realms of the subtle melody, with attention to raw levels of sound. Kenney's music can be heard on Ideologic Organ, Black Truffle, Weyrd Son, SIGE, and other l
...MoreJessika Kenney is an award-winning vocalist and composer working for the last 25 years in realms of the subtle melody, with attention to raw levels of sound. Kenney's music can be heard on Ideologic Organ, Black Truffle, Weyrd Son, SIGE, and other labels. She has performed her own compositions and those of many colleagues, as well as music of Cage, Feldman, Scelsi, Powell, Trimpin, Omoumi, and Sawai, informed by the atmospheres and techniques absorbed through the practice of Javanese sindhenan and Persian radifs. Kenney's ongoing collaborations with Eyvind Kang have been described as "serious, refined music" by the New York Times. Her involvements in noise, metal, electronic music and minimalism arise out of her Spokane punk origins and her insights into trans-disciplinary ways of knowing music and performance. Her 2015 gamelan-based LP "ATRIA" was released by the avant-metal SIGE label, alongside a large-scale, site-specific and interactive sound, calligraphic score, sculpture, and video installation filling five rooms at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. As a teacher, Kenney invigorates the voice as a means of embodying translation, philosophy, spiritual practice, community, and poetics, as well as encouraging compositional techniques drawn on a plurality of voices within each voice.
Kenney taught from 2007-2015 at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. She studied sindhenan with Nyi Supadmi, alm. in '97, '99, and 2000, and is a current student of Ostad Hossein Omoumi (UC Irvine), with whom she often performs and records ('Voices of Spring' 2007). Her awards include the James W Ray Distinguished Artist Award in 2015 and the Lionel Hampton Festival Best Jazz Vocalist Award in 1992.
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