James Everest

Composer / Musician / Producer / Director / Multidisciplinary artist JG Everest creates site-specific sound + performance installations that connect history and ecology, using spatial sound design as an integral compositional element. He has worked as a music director and performer for many projects and performing ensembles, including over a decade each with Catalyst Dance and Roma di Luna. He regularly teaches music and sound design and listening approaches to students, artists, and musicians of varied backgrounds, in workshops, classes, and private lessons. He also works as a consultant for organizations and individuals seeking new perspectives and creative solutions. He is a 2019 McKnight Artist Composer Fellow. Everest frequently works with performing poets and storytellers, as well as sculptors, dance artists, and video / photo artists to create immersive, multi-disciplinary installation experiences. He regularly collaborates and performs live music poetry with poets Rosie Peters and Jeffrey Skemp, (Skemp & Weather) among others. He is a founding member of bands Lateduster, Roma di Luna, The Sensational Joint Chiefs, BLACKFISH (with Joel Pickard), and Sans Le Systeme, as well as releasing multiple albums as a solo artist. Musically, he has performed and collaborated with many Minneapolis musicians, including Sean Daley aka Slug (Atmosphere), Eyedea, Dosh, Kitundu, Chastity Brown, Andrew Broder, Dave King, and Babes In Toyland. From 2004-2014 he was Music Director, composer, and lead collaborator for Emily Johnson / Catalyst Dance, awarded a NY “Bessie” award in 2012 for “The Thank-you Bar”. In 2015, he launched the ongoing, roaming iNMiGRATiON site-specific performance installation series which features his roving Free Range Orchestra & Choir, and Sans le Systeme collective and has been featured at a variety of venues and events, including the Square Lake Film & Music Festival, American Swedish Institute, Northern Spark Festival, Dakota Homecoming Pow Wow, Icehouse, Midtown Farmers Market, The Hook & Ladder Theater, and The Wolf House. In 2016, he founded Wavelets Creative, a community Arts organization dedicated to bringing people together in new ways, through immersive arts experiences, often emphasizing and facilitating connections to the natural world. In 2016 he co-created and directed the site-specific performance installation MY OCEAN at the Ordway Prairie nature preserve in Pope County, Minnesota; developed, directed, and presented the Monarch Magic! community Art + Nature workshop series at Lake Nokomis Park in Minneapolis; and designed, curated, and directed the Monarch Magic! Sound Garden at the annual Minneapolis Monarch Festival / Festival de la Monarcha. In 2017, he continued developing his Sound Garden installation model, with events at The Wolf House, Northern Spark Festival, Franconia Sculpture Park, and Monarch Magic!, as well as creating and launching The Buffalo Show – an ongoing series of indigenous artist showcases at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, hosted by poet and Dakota elder, “Strong Buffalo”. WATER SUITE: Four Seasonal Sound Gardens (2018) In 2018, JG Everest composed, produced, and directed four seasonal “Sound Gardens”, at four different outdoor sites around Minnesota – a suite of site-specific spatial soundscores, presented in partnership with several local organizations and artists, around the universal theme of “Water is Life” and the cosmic importance of water in our lives, and our responsibility to care for it. Each of the four seasonal sound gardens took place on or adjacent to a significant body of water in Minnesota: WINTER on frozen Lake Nokomis, SPRING on Lake Superior, SUMMER on Silver Lake, and FALL on the Mississippi River at Rice Creek. Stereo versions and limited release of the Water Suite recordings is planned for 2021.