Trap and Release LIVE STREAM

Six Words LIVE STREAM

VIRAL SILENCE 2022
COMMUNITY PORTRAITS IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19

Free Public Programming Calendar (registration requested)
all events live-streamed and in person

Trap and Release – JoVia Armstrong, Stephan Moore and Chicago’s Austin Community
in-person and live-stream: May 22, 2022, 1:00 pm
in-person: Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church, 5700 W Midway Park, Chicago, IL 60644
live-stream: Experimental Sound Studio – The Quarantine Concerts

Six Words – Edward Breitweiser and pt.fwd with the Bloomington-Normal Community
in-person and live-stream: June 24, 2022, 7:00 pm
in-person: McLean County Museum of History, 200 N Main Street, Bloomington, IL 61701
live-stream: Experimental Sound Studio – The Quarantine Concerts

Portal – X
app release: Summer, 2022

About Viral Silence

Viral Silence: Community Portraits in Response to Covid-19 is a statewide collaborative community commissioning and virtual touring program that captures local experiences and responses to Covid-19. This second year of programming partners three new artists and Illinois communities: JoVia Armstrong in collaboration with Stephan Moore, composers and sound artists, with Chicago’s Austin Neighborhood and Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church;  Eddie Breitweiser with pt.fwd and the McLean County Museum of History; and X, indigenous futurist, multidisciplinary artist and architect specializing in land, architectural, and new media installation, to create a geolocated augmented reality soundscape app.

Creative artists and the cultural sector have been especially adversely affected economically by the pandemic. Viral Silence strives to address the needs of these accomplished individual artists and offers hope and support to a wide and diverse audience of viewers who mourn the closure cultural and performance institutions. The project’s participatory processes and resulting portraits help to heal and bind communities around memory, loss, and rediscovery.

Commissioned Artists and Communities

JoVia Armstrong and Stephan Moore with Chicago’s Austin Neighborhood and St Martin’s Episcopal Church

Trap and Release

Trap and Release is a collaborative community effort to release the tension built during the pandemic. During the pandemic, Black people had to deal with multiple losses. In addition to losing loved ones to Covid, the violent protests in response to police brutality and the deaths of George Floyd and Brionna Taylor led to feelings of hopelessness, depression, and a sense of being trapped and not heard. Created by JoVia Armstrong in collaboration with Stephan Moore and members of the Austin community, who responded to prompts about their pandemic experiences, Trap and Release creates a safe space for community members to speak their truths about their Covid-19 experiences and the violence against Black Americans. Their responses—privately recorded within the community—are edited, processed, and combined with other musical materials by JoVia.

The meditative soundscape will be played back through a multi-channel speaker system designed and implemented by Stephan Moore in Austin’s Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church. Participants and the rest of the community will be able to come in to listen, relax, meditate, or just enjoy the sounds of their voices put to music. Systemic discrimination and unconscious bias can make a person feel trapped within their situation. Trap and Release offers an opportunity for release and relief to people in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood.

JoVia Armstrong

JoVia Armstrong is a well-traveled percussionist, sound artist, composer, and educator. She is an endorsed artist with four notable companies, including QSC, Sabian, Icon Pro Audio, and Gon Bops. In 2014, she won the Best Black Female Percussionist of the Year through the Black Women in Jazz Awards. JoVia received the 3Arts Siragusa Foundation Artist Award in 2011 for her work as an educator and is a member of Chicago’s AACM.  JoVia produced an EP for popular Chicago soul group JC Brooks Band in 2017 and is a member and composer behind Detroit-based World /Jazz group Musique Noire. Their 2008 debut CD, Good Hair, was nominated for three Detroit Music Awards. They won “Best Black Female Jazz Group” through Black Women in Jazz Awards in 2015 and have a 2017 release entitled “Reflections: We Breathe.” She released her debut album, “Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles” in 2009. She has performed with El DeBarge, Rahsaan Patterson, Maysa, EricRoberson, Frank McComb, Res, Omar, The Impressions, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, Malian musicians Ballaké Sissoko & Babani Kone, Joe Vasconcellos, Martha And Reeves.

Currently, she is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine, in the music department’s Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology program. While working on her dissertation, she has been a collaborating composer for various projects such as The Black Index Art Exhibit, curated by Dr. Bridget Cooks, and Your Ocean, My Ocean, curated by John Crawford for Eco ArtLab. She is also composing the film score and sound design for an adaptation of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” being released in 2022 as a short film.