DESCRIPTION:
Our first Outdoor Music + Food (OMF) Sunday August 7, 2016 at the Hester Street Fair featuring performances by New Optimism (Miho Hatori), Patrick Higgins and MSHR and food by Black Tree NYC.

MIHO HATORI is a singer, musician, & visual artist primarily known as the vocalist of the legendary NYC group Cibo Matto. Originally from Tokyo, now living in NYC, she maintains her personal music project New Optimism.

PATRICK HIGGINS is a New York based composer & performer of experimental music. Higgins has composed works for some of the nation's leading ensembles, ranging from chamber orchestra works, percussion cycles, and string quartets to smaller ensembles and soloists. As a soloist, he performs both classical acoustic and electric guitar in genre-bending contexts, utilizing extended technique and electronic processing. Described by the New Yorker Magazine as one of the "primes movers of the Local Avante Garde."

MSHR is a collaborative project by Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy based in Portland, Oregon. The duo produces installations, sculptures and ritualistic performances that place the human body into a dynamic relationship with sound and light, generating expanded sensory experiences. MSHR's live performances currently revolve around a unique system of light-audio feedback that employs hand made analog synthesizers and sculptural interfaces. The duo insert themselves into the system, sitting in the center of the array and steering the feedback patterns by shifting sculptural sensors and sound responsive lights to control the flow of raw electronic currents. Responding to the feedback system as a sentient entity, MSHR unfolds a ceremonial space that emphasizes the psychic and visionary qualities of improvised music. Cooper and Murphy are current artists in residence at Eyebeam.

BLACK TREE NYC is known for its sustainable and innovative cooking methods within its Lower East Side & Williamsburg restaurants. Chef Sandy Dee directs their practice of whole animal menu creation, not letting any part of an animal go to waste and sourcing fresh seasonal ingredients strictly within 300 miles of NYC.