Basilica Hudson: Nous: A Musical Rite at Basilica Hudson

Rare Off-Season Winter Event!

Saturday, February 1, 8pm | Doors + Ambient Pre-Show 7pm | Nous 8 pm

$15 Advance | $20 Door | Click here to purchase tickets! | **HEATED**

Nous is an experimental music project exploring ritual and spontaneity within music, and features multi- instrumentalists Christopher Bono (keyboards/electronics/percussion/vocals), Greg Fox (drums/percussion/electronics), Thor Harris (drums/percussion), Shahzad Ismaily (electronics/guitar/bass) and Grey Mcmurray (guitar), with special guests cellist Clarice Jensen, violinist/violist Caleb Burhans, violinist Laura Lutzke, flutist Alex Sopp, cellist/vocalist Imago, plus Laraaji & Arji (Zither, ambient sounds) and three dancers directed by Akil Davis from Loud Sol Productions.

This inaugural public performance by Nous will be on Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 8pm. This show will follow five-days of recording sessions from January 26-30, 2014 with producer and engineer Kevin McMahon (Swans, Titus Andronicus, Real Estate) at Dreamland Recording Studio in Woodstock, New York, during which the participants will seek inspiration through various musical approaches, both ancient and immediate, as they explore a wide spectrum of improvisational possibilities.

Nous aims to build communal musical relationships that collectively work to find new ways of creating art. Each installment will center around a different focal concept, and the project will feature a fluctuating group of artists. As founder Christopher Bono explains, “Nous aspires to bypass the lower level thought patterns of the egotistical mind and encourages the connection of those involved to reach a higher level of consciousness, providing a creative space where intuitive, unexpected, and unexplained results can occur.”

The name Nous was chosen for its double meaning. Nous means “we” or “us” in French; however, within the philosophical tradition it is sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, and is used to describe the faculty of the human mind which is described in classical philosophy as necessary for understanding what is true or real, similar to intuition. In the Eastern tradition, the sanskrit equivalent is Buddhi, which denotes an aspect of mind that is higher than the rational mind and that is attracted to Brahman (“Truth” or “Reality”).

The impulse for the Nous project came after Christopher Bono finished his latest full-length orchestral work, Bardo, to be released in 2014. After spending two years working on the score and the studio recording of Bardo, Bono was driven to experience and investigate new and completely different approaches to musical creation.