Weston Olencki

Title: when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean
Commission: 2023
Completed: 2024
Instrumentation: Flute (C and bass), clarinet (B-flat and contrabass), violin, voice, percussion, electronics
Premiere Location: May 21, 2024 at Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NY
Premiere Ensemble: TAK Ensemble

Weston Olencki is composer, musician, and audio engineer. Their current work is focused around questions of instrumental music and its contexts/constructs, various mediated practices of listening and improvisation, and is poetically rooted in the technological, material, and cultural histories of vernacular art-making. Weston has previously performed and presented work at the Borealis Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Musica Nova (as a soloist with the Helsinki Philharmonic), Lampo, Black Mountain College, the American Academy in Rome, Roulette Intermedium, Jalopy Theatre, & was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis from the Darmstadt Ferienkurse in 2016. Various recording projects have been released by HatHut, Carrier Records, New Amsterdam, Dinzu Artefacts, SUPERPANG, Creative Sources, Tripticks Tapes, KAIROS, Lobby Art, Sound Holes, Out of Your Head, Astral Spirits, and more. Their latest recording/performance project, Old Time Music, was featured on Bandcamp Daily’s Best Experimental Music of 2022. Weston is an active member of RAGE THORMBONES, Harmonic Space Orchestra, Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, Clone Decay (with Mary Halvorson & Kalia Vandever), The Hollows (with Nick Dunston & Etienne Nillesen), and performs regularly as a soloist and ensemble member on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, organs, and various electronic media.