SOUND TYPE: Kengchakaj x Nate Chinen

WHEN
8PM
Friday, May 23, 2025
Where
Theater, Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA

SOUND TYPE 2025 opens with Kengchakaj, Bangkok-born & New York-based award-winning pianist, improviser, and electronics experimentalist. Kengchakaj’s practice engages with organizing and improvising sounds that draw inspiration from ancestral soundscapes and modes of collaboration and expression rooted in Southeast Asian tradition and lineage. He will be performing a piece entitled Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง; a multimedia performance in collaboration with visual artist Nitcha Tothong.

The featured guest writer is Nate Chinen, author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century, recognized as one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, GQ, Billboard and others. In addition to the concert, your SOUND TYPE ticket includes entry to the public writing seminar the next day led by author Nate Chinen to explore deeper into the sound practice of Kengchakaj on Saturday at 1pm back here at AAI in the theater.

SOUND TYPE Music Festival is a multi-part series of live concerts and public seminars that pair musicians with writers to reflect on music practice and critical feedback pushing against category, form and stereotype. Join us at all five groundbreaking and genre-defying live events and discussions through 2025!

SOUND TYPE Concert: Kengchakaj

concert

8 PM–9:30 PM on May 23, 2025

$20

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Kengchakaj

Kengchakaj is a Bangkok-born, New York-based award-winning pianist, improviser, synthesist, and one-half of elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ, an artist collective with interdisciplinary media artist, Nitcha Tothong. Kengchakaj practice engages with organizing and improvising sounds that draw inspiration from ancestral soundscapes and modes of collaboration and expression rooted in Southeast Asian tradition and lineage. His medium of expression spans acoustic piano, retune analog synthesizer, electronics, multichannel spatial audio, and live coding (real-time programming to create sound or image) speculative imaginary electronics ensemble utilizing technology to produce a multimedia multisensory live performance.

Kengchakaj is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music(MM), a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a Gold Award Lumen Prize winner. Kengchakaj is a Collider Fellow at Lincoln Center and a Y11 NEW INC member. Moreover, Kengchakaj was a Y10 NEW INC member(2023-2024), and Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellow(2024), as well as an artist in residence at CultureHub(2023-2024), Institute for Electronic Arts(2023), Babycastles(2021), and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity(2018), and participated in Nusasonic’s Common Tonalities project(2022). His projects have received development funds and support from the Lincoln Center, Queens Council on the Arts, City Artist Corps, Rhizome, Processing Foundation, and a Creatives Rebuild New York guaranteed income for artist grant recipients. Besides the Lumen Prize, Kengchakaj has won numerous awards, including Best Soloist from Thailand International Jazz Conference(2013), First Prize awards in the Ensemble(2013) and Individual Performance(2011) from Thailand Jazz Competition, Honorable Mentions NYC Jazz Records Best of 2019 New Releases.

Nate Chinen

NATE CHINEN is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century, recognized as one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, GQ, Billboard and others. He served as the first assistant coordinator at the Kelly Writers House at Penn, before becoming a columnist for JazzTimes and a music critic for The New York Times.

A thirteen-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, Chinen is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the 2003 autobiography of festival impresario and producer George Wein. His work appears in Best Music Writing 2011, Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012), and Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Voyageur Press, 2012).

Chinen was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He started his career as a music critic in 1996, at the Philadelphia City Paper. He moved to New York City in 1998, and began writing for a range of publications. For several years he was the jazz critic for Weekend America, a syndicated radio program. He covered jazz for The Village Voice from 2003 through 2005, when he became a regular contributor to the Times.

At WRTI, Chinen coordinates coverage of both jazz and classical music, and co-hosts The Late Set podcast. He continues to contribute to NPR Music, where he served as a judge in the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest. He also maintains a popular Substack newsletter, The Gig.

SOUND TYPE: Kengchakaj x Nate Chinen

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SOUND TYPE Concert: Kengchakaj

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