MANKATO — In their individual performances Saturday at Mankato’s Carnegie Art Center, Emily Rach Beisel and Jeremy Ylvisaker will work from their established music that grows through improvisation and, for Ylvisaker, looping, to create unique experiences.
They are the final performers in the second year of Liz Draper’s curated Live at the Carnegie series that continues to bring unique sounds to Mankato audiences.
As they spoke on Zoom about what audiences can expect — with Beisel’s camera turned off as she drove and Ylvisaker surrounded by keyboards in his home — it begins with a bit of playful banter.
“I’m doing a solo. I assume, Jeremy, you’re doing a solo set as well?” Beisel asked.
“Wait, what?” he responds. “Just kidding.”
Ylvisaker, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, teacher and visual artist, spoke first about what he will bring to the Carnegie.
“I’ve been doing more solo shows recently, and they actually come in a variety of shapes depending on the event,” he began. “And I think I’m going to do a little bit more improvising, some looping. I’m trying to figure out what my rig will be.”
With a recent show at a punk bar, he said he went more “immersive, sonically,” with long-form compositions and less improvisation. When he learned about the unique acoustics in the former library building in Mankato where performers are positioned in a rotunda, he had some ideas.
“I might just bring the heavy, the big guns then. Or whatever heavy machinery,” he said. In doing so, he strives to bring more density to the music than volume, inviting the audience to become more a part of things.
Beisel will use her time to take people on a musical journey by running through her most recent album. By doing so, the audience is rewarded for listening all the way through, they said.
“It’s designed to be able to be performed live, and it does involve a fair amount of improvisation. But it’s very structured. Some things are, like, fully composed, and some things are improvised,” they said. “So it’s different every time, but there’s a sound world and sort of a set of materials that it exists inside of.”
And in regard to Ylvisaker’s presentation, they said, “I want you to bring the big guns.”
Beisel further described the reason for that this way: “I love getting into that territory, you know, where the decibel level takes the sound into a physical realm. So it’s not always just cerebral. It’s also like a very physical experience.”
Both artists don’t like to repeat the same music, the same show, every time. They look at it as organic and want to have it reflect who they are at the moment, where they’re performing and what the audience is giving back to them.
A Jazz Noise wrote: “Beisel pokes around in the sonic depths and brings leviathans out to play.” They seek to increase the visibility and involvement of femme, trans and nonbinary artists, doing so by founding the Pleiades Series at Elastic Arts in Chicago that presents monthly performance, community-based free improvisational sessions and a biennial PleiadesFest.
They earned a master of music degree from Northwestern University, is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 10-208 and was a 2024 3Arts Awardee in Music.
Ylvisaker — who can trace a lineage to the namesake of Bethany Lutheran College’s fine arts center — has been influenced by decades of collaborations with people from Bon Iver and John Prine to Sara Bareilles and Bruce Hornsby. Some of his favorite art is collaborations between taggers, the people who paint over their tag, and the people who mark where utilities are.
He also received an invitation for a collaboration that was too incredible to pass up: He was asked by members of the original New Power Generation to step in for Prince after the pop star’s untimely death.
“(It was) just a ridiculous challenge,” he said. “You know, it’s like you get an offer like that and, of course, you have to say yes. And then you grow like six years in a month just getting fully inside one human brain. One vast human brain.”
And they’re both interested in the artist talk portion of the program to help give the audience a better idea of what they do and how it invites the listener along on the ride.
“I think because it’s often such a niche interest, there’s sometimes an assumption that everybody in the crowd just kind of knows the deal, has some familiarity with experimental work. Has a context for it,” Beisel said. “But I think that assumption doesn’t always serve because it can make people feel alienated or not provide such a clear path to connecting with the work.”