We are excited to feature Bill Nace and Dana Jessen on the BOP STOP stage! Tickets for tonight are $20 each (a $2 per ticket processing fee will be added to your purchase).

This event will also be livestreamed on BOP STOP's Youtube Channel at showtime. Accessing the stream is free but donations are encouraged and directly support the band.

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"“Bill Nace Plays the 2 String Taishogoto” is a record that feels to me like a torch set on fire for the dark ages, or maybe more like an immolation. Nace is a singular figure of the American underground with a catalogue of creative output that stretches across mediums, people, places, drawings, sounds, images, instruments. I’ve been lucky enough to call him a close friend for 3 decades now. There’s a quality to Bill’s playing that’s unique and hard to put words to, but I’ve seen it show up in many different settings. When Bill plays people stop and listen up. There’s recognition that something extraordinary is happening. It breaks through the surface of guitars, bands, and bars as a wake-up call." -JT

Bill Nace is a New Jersey guitarist, active in the experimental and free-improv scene since the mid-00s. Maybe best known as one half of Body/Head, the majority of Bill’s album credits are collaborative, with players including Paul Flaherty, Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano and Steve Baczkowski, many of which have seen release on his own Open Mouth label. Bill has two solo LPs on Drag City.

Dana Jessen is a bassoonist, improviser, and electroacoustic musician whose original compositions, improvisations, and collaborative work have been met with critical acclaim. A recipient of the 2023 Cleveland Arts Prize and hailed as a “bassoon virtuoso” (Chicago Reader), Jessen’s distinct voice and musical language have positioned her as a pioneer of contemporary and improvised music on the bassoon. Over the past two decades, she has presented world premiere performances throughout North America and Europe while maintaining equal footing in the creative music community as an improviser.

As a sought-after collaborative musician, Jessen has worked closely with dozens of artists including composers George Lewis, Caroline Shaw, Pamela Z, and Michael Gordon, choreographer Pam Tanowitz, and music technologist Ted Moore, to name a few. Her solo work is almost entirely grounded in electroacoustic composition that highlight her unique musical language. Jessen has released three solo albums — Set (2023), Winter Chapel (2020), and Carve (2017) — and can also be heard on George Lewis’ Recombinant Trilogy (2021). As an advocate for electroacoustic music, Jessen served as the Vice President of Splice for several years, an organization dedicated to the performance, creation, and development of music for performers and electronics.

Jessen is the co-founder of the contemporary reed quintet, Splinter Reeds, an ensemble explicitly dedicated to cutting-edge composition by emerging and established composers. The ensemble regularly tours throughout the year, often serving as the ensemble-in-residence at numerous academic institutions while presenting concerts on new music festivals and concert series. Jessen has performed as a chamber musician with groups such as Alarm Will Sound, Amsterdam’s DOEK Collective, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Tri-Centric Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, and Roomful of Teeth, among many others. She is also active in the creative music world, having performed with improvisers such as Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Sam Pluta, Anne La Berge, Jaribu Shahid, Wilbert de Joode, Frank Gratkowski, Mike Reed, Joe Morris, Erica Dicker, and many others.