Marja Ahti

A musician and composer based in Finland, Marja Ahti has been a stalwart of the Finnish experimental music scene for more than a decade, working primarily with field recordings, synthesizers, electronic feedback, and digital processing.

In her Chicago debut, she premieres Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth for 4-channel tape, live electronics, and amplified objects. Ahti’s new work is an exploration of sound as a primeval force, combining bowed percussion and organ with recordings of nature and everyday spaces.

Her work is rooted in an abiding fascination with the “simple strangeness” of human experiences with sound, and human consciousness more broadly—the notion that vibrations sensed by eardrums can be experienced as something deeply affecting, even profound, under the right conditions. The resulting compositions create vivid electroacoustic environments, precise and rich in detail, characterized by slowly warping harmonies and mutating textures.

Co-presented by the Renaissance Society and Lampo.