The Ford

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is renowned for the sonic architecture of her music, and for the way she seems to build entire communities of sound using little more than a Buchla synthesizer. The surging, tidal sounds of her music—and the serious spiritual intention that she invests in it—make even its most complex moments feel like a soothing balm, and her sharp songwriting skills led Resident Advisor to laud her most recent album, The Mosaic of Transformation, for its ability to melt “the pop-savvy hooks of her past records into one gorgeous, rarefied sound, as invigorating and smooth as electricity flowing through circuits.”

Julianna Barwick first fell in love with the potential of the human voice as a kid, when she encountered the staggering power of a church choir’s many singers reverberating against one another and in the space of the building. As a composer, singer, and arranger, she gathers wispy voices into magisterial clouds of sound, with her production techniques creating spaces large enough to contain them. The effect is so staggering that Pitchfork described her 2020 album Healing is a Miracle as “star-straddling, world-filling music.” True to the album’s title, her music possesses a sense of calm, patient wonder at our collective ability to put things right and become whole again.

Join us for this very special evening pairing two artists who are fundamentally reimagining the emotional dimensions of ambient music.