Guild Hall After Hours

Known for their creativity and boundary-stretching performances, New-York based duo hear|say approaches music with the child-like curiosity and enthusiasm of a beginner, and with the skills of seasoned performers. 

Cellist Iva Casian-Lakos and percussionist John Ling are not only experienced instrumentalists, but are also involved in composition, improvisation, songwriting, poetry, and theater, all of which influences their continually growing body of new work that they commission and perform. 

First prize winners of the 2019 Ackerman Chamber Music Competition, the duo performs their original music and collaborates with other NY-based ensembles and composers, such as Double Standard, Margaret Schedel, Kevin Kay, and Erika Dohi. 

New York-based cellist, singer, and improviser Iva Casian-Lakoš performs across the US and Europe with interdisciplinary, genre-bending ensembles Synesthetic Project, hear|say, eco|tonal, and Ensemble Illyrica. Iva’s versatile repertoire ranges from classical cello to boundary-stretching new works, involving choreography, singing, acting, and improvisation. 

Iva enjoys close working relationships with many composers and premiered music by Joan La Barbara (Bang on a Can Marathon), Wang Lu, Erika Dohi, John Ling, and David Crowell (Rites of Spring Festival). Later this season she will premiere works by Mak Murtic (Scena Amadeo), Chelsea Loew, and James Budinich. She also collaborates with visual artists, videographers, and dancers in interdisciplinary projects, often via the Vienna-based artist collective Synesthetic Project. 

Iva performed as soloist with Columbus Symphony Orchestra, New Albany Symphony, and SEO Symphony Orchestra, collaborated with members of JACK, Emerson, Calidore, and Ying quartets in chamber performances, and appeared in concert halls around the US, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (Bruno Walter), Jordan Hall, and Kennedy Center (Millennium).  

She was also invited as soloist/chamber musician to Bang on a Can Marathon, Scena Amadeo, Hidalgo Festival, Hvar Festival, Rites of Spring Festival, IMS Prussia Cove, Barnes Ensemble, Vivo Music Festival, and Lake George Music Festival.  

https://ivacasianlakos.com 

John Ling is a drummer, percussionist, and composer from Las Vegas, Nevada, currently based in Port Jefferson, New York. He is a founding member of new music cello and percussion duo hear|say, and appeared as a soloist in Spectrum’s Rzewski at 80 Festival, where he performed Rzewski’s percussion monodrama The Fall of the Empire. John’s concert music has been commissioned and performed by Yarn/Wire, Double Standard, Ensemble Decipher, F-Plus, Spark Duo, and hear|say. Also a writer, John has published poems and stories in ONE ART, HOOT Review, and Rust + Moth, and written program notes for the New York New Music Ensemble. 

John holds a BM in music performance from Arizona State University and an MM in performance from SUNY Stony Brook, where he is currently working toward a DMA in performance and an MA in composition. He has studied percussion with Eduardo Leandro, Simone Mancuso, Mark Sunkett, Shaun Tilburg, and J.B. Smith, drum set and improvisation with Dan Weiss, Marcus Gilmore, Ari Hoenig, Ray Anderson, and Dom Moio, and compositionwith Margaret Schedel, Matt Barnson, Dan Weymouth, Nirmali Fenn, and Daria Semegen. John also teaches percussion and music theory in various secondary programs, and is a frequent member of the house band at The Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, New York. 

http://www.johnlingmusic.com 

Symbiotic Creation is a dreamtime river through which the lives of many beings flow into one. I am interested in the converging of self and landscapes through poetic ecosystem engineering. As I work, I am written into the earth there as a memory. Something is taken and something else is given as mind dissolves in play. Through this process of dissolving of body into ecology, I am searching for secret doorways into unity.

https://www.mamoun.xyz 

Erica Cirino is a science writer and artist exploring the intersection of the human and nonhuman worlds. Her widely published photojournalistic works depict the numerous ways people connect to nature—wild creatures in particular—and shape planet Earth. In her recent book, Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis (forthcoming, October 2021) Erica documents plastic across ecosystems and elements, the numerous and insidious ways plastic and its industries are harming communities of color, and strategies that work to prevent plastic from causing further devastation to our planet and its inhabitants. She lives with her rescued street dog, Sabi, on and between two shores, Long Island and Connecticut.