Emily Wells: Regards to the End
Copresented with The Cedar Cultural Center
Tue, Jan 31
7 pm doors // 7:30 pm show
The Cedar Cultural Center
“A master of blending the worlds of classical and electronics” –NPR
“Dramatic, meticulous, and gothic” –The New York Times
Composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells and her band (cellist Topu Lyo, drummer Addie Vogt, and multi-instrumentalist Alec Spiegelman) will perform work from her 2022 album Regards to the End. A loving ode to and dialogue with AIDS activists of the past, Wells' latest album weaves a narrative of radical empathy and hope out of their resiliency. By crafting her orchestral pop around the question “What could we learn from the activists of the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the face of climate crisis?”, Wells ties together the AIDS crisis, the climate emergency, and her own lived experience watching the world burn.
As a 2022 Toulmin Fellow for The Center for Ballet and the Arts & National Sawdust, Wells continued to explore these concepts through movement and projections. Wells will present part of this video work—crafted out of footage of AIDS protests, extreme climate events, and contemporary dance—during this performance, as well as songs from her latest album and her back catalog reinterpreted for a four-piece band. Even under the weight of historical and current governmental denial and neglect, Wells refuses to give in to despair, singing in "Dress Rehearsal": “Where nothing is still, love happened here.” Join us as Emily Wells looks to the past to find a way forward in a burning world in this headlining performance.
About Emily Wells
Forging a bridge between pop and chamber music, composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells builds songs from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string and wind instruments. Her evocative music (described as “visionary” by NPR) and performances (called “quietly transfixing” by the New York Times) impel listeners to be attuned. Wells’s latest release, the 10-song album Regards to the End, explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience watching the world burn. A work of radical empathy, Regards to the End foregrounds the power of art, critique, and care to connect and perhaps redeem us.