Program Notes for Shahzad Ismaily: Bitterness Is Not a Bridge
Shahzad Ismaily
Bitterness Is Not a Bridge
October 10, 2025
McGuire Theater
He is
He is a master of being the door
Not the wind that flows through
Not the elephants that storm
Not the small child on its belly
The door
Open
Forever
If you want to follow my heart
Follow the trail of blood
It’s still flowing
So you won’t lose me
In this sea of pretenders
Though I will say
Time is not in your favor
For my supply will run out
When my legs buckle beneath me
“Summarizing exactly what Ismaily does—let alone, how he’s so good at it—can feel a little like bottling wind.” —New York Times
Like water to seed or light to leaf, Shahzad Ismaily has long sustained the projects of others. Highly sought-after as a musical partner, the Pakistani American multi-instrumentalist now takes center stage. Ever the collectivist, Ismaily gathers a group of esteemed collaborators to help tend the soil. His South Asian jazz stylings mesh with Laura Veirs’s inspired alt-folk; his improvisatory genius dovetails with Nels Cline (Wilco)’s expansive guitar vision; his lyricism buoys Alan Sparhawk’s (Low) melody lines. For the first time in a long time, we witness the source become the fruit.
Featuring:
audrey chen (vocals)
nels cline (guitar)
dosh (keys, drums)
shahzad ismaily (multiple instruments)
yuniya edi kwon (violin, movement, vocals)
alan sparhawk (guitar, vocals)
laura veirs (guitar, vocals)
bizhiki is dylan bizhikiins jennings, joe rainey, and s. carey (Pow Wow drums, piano, and vocals)
Tonight’s performance will run approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.
Please join us before the performance and after with the artists in the Walker’s Cityview Bar.
As a musician, an integral part of my creative practice is collaborative and has always been in communion with other people. I find that art and art making are conversations. I don’t believe art is made by a single heroic individual alone in a vast sea yelling by themselves, or a single individual that has such a luminary solo dreamscape that evokes critical art alone. I am quietly critical of that. A friend once said to me that if you’re a musician in the Gamelan, your melody is a series of notes interwoven with the person sitting across from you, so why would you sit alone with a metronome and practice at home? That’s nonsensical. Every note responds to another, continuously speaking and evoking.
In addition, I feel my work, and the work of others I support, should be and indeed needs to be their most vulnerable version—the one often obscured from others, and even themselves. And so, when I’m producing someone’s record or rehearsing, I’m verbally and nonverbally working to evoke an inner landscape that typically is hidden because the room doesn’t feel safe or quiet or welcoming enough. My goal is to try to push against that.
There’s a desire to keep shedding and letting go of the previous skin, which makes your new skin very raw and therefore more sensitive. If you observe the beginnings of healing you will find that these new areas sense things differently. These areas have a higher acuity for touch and for pain, so if you’re making music and improvising and always shedding, always letting go, you’re potentially getting to a post-wound, highly sensitive place. You’re moving towards healing.
In many ways, music is a request for music to appear. That is, just because you’re playing guitar doesn’t mean the music has started yet. In fact, true music requires that you shed what’s above to get to what lives below. This way of creating, directly speaks to my own skin and sense of openness, which is a molecular part of my identity.
I once read what it means to stand with your palms open, facing towards another person. I hold this image in my mind and whether or not I literally do it, I try to emotionally hold onto the sensory image that my hands are open and facing towards the person in front of me, providing unguarded, synergetic opportunities. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to tightly hold the information that you have, vs. always sharing it. In my life, it is clear that by giving, you as well as the receiver are growing; the image of palms open towards another person means that you can look for what lives beyond, and they can look beyond what they see, together unveiling new information built upon what we now collectively know. – Shahzad Ismaily
Accessibility Notes
For more information about accessibility, visit our Access page.
For questions on accessibility, content and sensory notes or to request additional accommodations, call 612-253-3556 or email access@walkerart.org.
About Shahzad Ismaily
Shahzad Ismaily is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer and engineer. Born in Harrisburg, PA, to Pakistani immigrant parents, he was diagnosed with ectodermal dysplasia—a rare genetic disorder that has profoundly impacted Ismaily’s ability to listen, endure, compose and collaborate.
Since moving to New York City in 2000, Ismaily has been a seminal member of the music community. Exploring improvisation, tonal shifts, and rhythmic movement, the Grammy-nominated artist has collaborated with numerous national and international musicians. His work spans a wide array of instruments—from electric bass, guitar, drums, percussion to synthesizers and various sound-makers gathered throughout life’s travels. Described by The New York Times as the “Musician’s favorite Musician”, he has recorded and performed with a diverse crew of artmakers and avante-garde musicians from around the world.
Collaborators
As a 2nd generation Taiwanese American (born 1976) living in Berlin, Audrey Chen`s work continuously explores the displacement of story and history due to the migration and integration processes, loss and adoption of language, untold stories, and how the past can be accessed through inherited and lived experience. Her practice is deeply intertwined with this act of invocation, calling upon the physical body to remember beyond the limitations of its own memory. Through extreme, un-processed hyperextensions of her voice in tandem with the chaotic glitch of a Ciat Lonbarde “Foruses” synthesiser, she invokes a highly amplified joint resonant body/space transforming itself in a feedback loop of imagination, touch, vibration, sound and aural sensation. For over two decades, she has been touring extensively, appearing worldwide and aside from her solo concerts, Chen performs currently in her longest running duo project since 2005 with Phil Minton; as BEAM SPLITTER with trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø; as MOPCUT with Lukas Koenig and Julien Desprez; with electronic music artist Kaffe Matthews; with American sound artist Nick Klein and as a duo for voice/live digital process with Mexican sound artist Hugo Esquinca.
Nels Cline is a genre-defying guitarist widely celebrated as a longtime member of seminal rock band Wilco, and for his expansive solo career spanning jazz, rock, and experimental music. As a band leader he’s released three critically acclaimed albums on Blue Note Records, from the lush orchestration of Lovers to the electrified improvisations of Share the Wealth. His latest project Consentrik Quartet showcases his deep roots in the avant-garde improvised-music scene, further cementing his reputation as one of today’s most adventurous and versatile guitarists.
Martin Dosh, or “Dosh” as he is known, has been playing drums since he was fifteen years old. A longtime mainstay of the Twin Cities indie music scene (a former member of Lateduster and Fog, among others), Martin Dosh now performs primarily solo when he’s not performing with Andrew Bird’s band. He is a percussionist at heart, but moves between multiple instruments both on recordings and in live settings, and accomplishes a rich, layered sound by looping himself. His music and influence are felt far and wide both here in the Twin Cities and nationally as well. He always sets out to make something he’s never heard before.
yuniya edi kwon (b. 1989) is a composer-improviser, violinist, and vocalist based in New York City. Through a practice of diasporic improvisationalism, yuniya creates performance work that is “absolutely stunning” (Wire Magazine), “shockingly original, perfectly realized” (Crack Magazine), and “as unpredictable as life itself” (Monheim Papers). She is a Guggenheim Fellow in Composition, Creative Capital Awardee, Arts Fellow at Princeton University, Civitella Ranieri Fellow, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Awardee in Music/Sound, and United States Artists Ford Fellow. In addition to an evolving solo practice, yuniya collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Holland Andrews, Du Yun, Kenneth Tam, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. Her work has been presented by Dia Art Foundation, Performa Biennial, New York Live Arts, Under The Radar Festival, National Sawdust, Roulette Intermedium, On The Boards, Asia Society, Harlem Stage, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Monheim Triennale, and others. She has performed throughout the Americas and EU, including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Jazzfest Berlin, Barbican Centre, Walker Art Center, Chicago Jazz Festival, Kennedy Center, Big Ears Festival, SESC Pompeia, SESC Santos, Festival Sons d’hivers, Festival Banlieues Bleues, Bergamo Jazz Festival, and more.
Alan Sparhawk has long been a prolific and versatile musician, a restless spirit constantly driven to explore new sonic and emotional landscapes. While he’s best known for his three-decade tenure as the frontman of the legendary band Low, his many side projects over the years reveal a musician unafraid to experiment with genres ranging from punk and funk to production and improvisation. Even within Low, Sparhawk never adhered to a singular sound or formula. The band was a dynamic collaboration—part dialogue, part romance—between Sparhawk and his wife, Mimi Parker, the group’s co-founder, drummer, co-vocalist, and its radiant, irreplaceable heart.
Now, as a solo artist, he’s delving deeper into experimental and intimate sonic spaces, combining haunting melodies with introspective lyricism that explores themes of love, loss, and resilience. Sparhawk’s recent solo work finds him experimenting with minimalism and ambient textures and at the same time marrying trap beats and production with vocoder-heavy vocal stylings. His live shows as a solo performer are known for their emotional intensity and intimate atmosphere, offering audiences a closer connection to his music.
Outside of his solo efforts, Sparhawk continues to collaborate with a wide range of artists across genres, always pushing the boundaries of his sound. His willingness to embrace both the delicate and the dissonant in his music keeps him a dynamic and evolving figure in the indie music world.
Laura Veirs’ haunting indie folk has taken on many shades over her sprawling, prolific career. Born in 1973, the Portland, Oregon-based singer/songwriter had little interest in becoming a musician until attending Carleton College in Minnesota, where she was introduced to Bikini Kill and Sonic Youth, inspiring her to pick up a guitar and form a punk band. After graduating and moving to Seattle, Veirs forged her path as a singer-songwriter and has since produced 14 albums, toured the world and collaborated with such luminaries as Sufjan Stevens, Colin Meloy, kd lang, Neko Case, Beth Orton, Sam Amidon, and Bill Frisell. She is a mother in a blended family with four teens and is working on a book about creativity.
Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey‘s voice can celebrate or console, welcome or intimidate, wake you up with a start or lull your babies to sleep. Each note conveys a clear message, no matter the inflection: We’re still here. The musician demonstrates a command of the Pow Wow style, descending from Indigenous singing that’s been heard across the waters of what is now called Minnesota for centuries.
A Red Lake Ojibwe from Minneapolis – a city with one of the largest and proudest Native American populations in the country – Rainey was raised less than a mile away from Franklin Avenue, the post-Reorganization Act urban nexus of local Native American life, a community centered in the Little Earth housing projects and the Minneapolis American Indian Center. On his debut album Niineta, he collaborated with producer Andrew Broder, orchestrating and recontextualizing the ancient Pow Wow sound in strange, new in-between places.
Rainey also collaborates with fellow Pow Wow singer Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings (Bad River Ojibwe) and multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer S. Carey on Bizhiki, blending ethereal vocals and visceral drumming with contemporary soundscapes. Bizhiki released their debut album Unbound via Jagjaguwar in 2024.
Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, a member of the Ojibwe Marten clan, is an accomplished educator, writer, photographer, musician, and public servant. He is a graduate of UW-Madison with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies and a Master’s in Environmental Conservation, a former, elected Tribal Councilman for the Bad River Tribe, and is currently a HEAL Earth Partnership doctoral fellow at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
Jennings also founded the Bizhiki Culture & Dance Company in 2016, an organization with a goal of furthering people’s understanding of Indigenous cultures through interactive workshops, presentations, consultations, and exhibitions. Jennings is committed to living a traditional way of life and to teaching environmental practices, harvesting techniques, and traditional subsistence.
As a Pow Wow singer and drummer, Jennings performs alongside fellow singer and drummer Joe Rainey (Red Lake Ojibwe) and multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer S. Carey in Bizhiki, blending ethereal vocals and visceral drumming with contemporary soundscapes. Bizhiki released their debut album Unbound via Jagjaguwar
in 2024.
Over nearly 15 years, Wisconsin-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer S. Carey has fostered his flourishing solo career via themes of nature and sustainability, songwriting built from jazz beginnings, and heartfelt, emotive lyricism.
Through his solo project and close collaborations (Shadowlands w/ John Raymond; Bizhiki w/ Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings and Joe Rainey), S. Carey has released six full-length albums and two EPs, along with production, songwriting, performance, and remixing for / alongside: Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Big Red Machine, Bruce Hornsby, Victoria Canal, Gia Margaret, Gordi, Owen, et al.
S. Carey has emerged as a prolific touring musician in the past 15 years, boasting diverse touring experience. As the second longest-serving member of Bon Iver, S. Carey has proven to be a trusted, integral, and foundational member of the renowned band’s live experience.
Living Land Acknowledgment
The McGuire Theater and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
Acknowledgments
To learn more about upcoming performances, visit 2025/26 Walker Performing Arts Season.
