Speaker

Floor 3, Theater

Saturday, June 29 at 8 pm
Sunday, June 30 at 8 pm
Monday, July 1 at 8 pm

As part of the performance program organized by guest curator Taja Cheek for Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Holland Andrews welcomes audiences to Floor 3 of the Museum in this new performance. In this work Andrews engages harmonic disintegration and language transmutation to solicit the wisdom held inside the body, producing somatic catharsis through sound. 

Speaker was commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Holland Andrews (they/them; born 1988 in Orange, CA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is a vocalist, composer, music producer, and performer whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet, and electronics and frequently highlights themes surrounding vulnerability and healing. Andrews harnesses these instruments’ innate qualities of power and elegance to serve as a cohesive vessel for these themes. As a vocalist, their influences stem from a dynamic range including contemporary opera, theater, and jazz, while their unique vocal style integrates these influences with language disintegration, vocal distortion, and environmental ambiance. Andrews previously performed solo music under the stage name Like a Villain.

In addition to creating solo work, Andrews composes and performs for dance, theater, and film, and their work has toured nationally and internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothée Munyaneza, Will Rawls, Sonya Tayeh, Jenn Freeman, and poet Demian Dinéyazhi’. Notable musical collaborations include Son Lux, Christina Vantzou, William Brittelle, Methods Body, West Thordson, Peter Broderick, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Nils Frahm. Andrews composed film scores for Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA (nominated for an Independent Spirit Award) and Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn’s Another Body (awarded SXSW 2023 Documentary Feature Special Jury Award for Innovation in Storytelling). Andrews is a FCA Artist Fellow (2023) and USA Artist Fellow (2024).