Whitney Johnson / Lia Kohl / Macie Stewart release "Stone | Piece" performance film /// five shows w/ Andrew Bird December 8th-12th in Chicago
(( photo by Derrick Alexander ))
Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart Release "Stone | Piece" Performance Film by Derrick Alexander
Perform Five Nights With Andrew Bird, December 8-12, Annual Gezelligheid Holiday Shows in Chicago
Today, December 8th, 2025, the trio of violist/composer Whitney Johnson, cellist/composer Lia Kohl, and violinist/composer Macie Stewart release a performance film of their composition "Stone | Piece." The film was directed by Derrick Alexander at International Anthem's new Chicago headquarters inside Rebuild and Theaster Gates' latest space-based project, The Land School. Watch here.
Tonight, the trio kickoff five nights of performances, opening for Andrew Bird at his annual Gezelligheid holiday shows, December 8th-12th at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. All five nights are sold out for in-person attendance, but the December 9th show is available to stream online. Tickets here.
These five performances and the "Stone | Piece" film follow the BODY SOUND [STONE PIECE] cassette/digital single (released in August 2025), and preview a new album from Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart TBA 2026.
(( still from "Stone | Piece" film by Derrick Alexander ))
The "Stone | Piece" film captures Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart on the floor of The Land School's auditorium, doing a fresh take on a composition where instruments and voices are layered with analog tape loops to create a multidimensional abstraction of time and timbre. The resultant sound lands somewhere on the outskirts of minimalist classical, modern improvisation, ambient and pastoral music idioms.
(( BODY SOUND [STONE PIECE] cassette/digital cover art by Jordan Reyes ))
The "Stone | Piece" composition was originally recorded and released as part of the BODY SOUND [STONE PIECE] cassette/digital single released by Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart in August 2025. In that recording, “Stone Piece I” was born of string and vocal improvisations by the trio captured in January of 2025 by Dave Vettraino at Shirk Studios in Chicago. The group reconvened later that month at International Anthem Studios, where they made analog tape loops with the recordings from Shirk, manipulating and processing them by hand, creating and capturing new layers of sound in real time.
(( photo by Leah Wendzinski ))
…about Johnson, Kohl, Stewart…
Based in Chicago, Whitney Johnson composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording. As artist-in-residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm and Inkonst in Malmö, Sweden, she composed sine waves, marimba, viola, ARP Odyssey synthesizer, and Halldorophone into a multi-channel performance-installation and her latest LP, Hav (2024, Drag City). As Matchess, the Stena cassette (2024, Drag City) embodies an alter ego to join the cult of Hermaphroditus in Cypriot and Greek antiquity.
Recent performance-installations FIAT (2025, Indexical, Roulette Intermedium and 2023, Forecast Platform Berlin), The Tuning of the Elements (2023, Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago), Death in Trafo (or, The Crater) (2023, Logan Center for the Arts), Huizkol (2020, Lampo), and Fundamental 256 Hz (2019–2022, worldwide) consider the possibility of brainwave entrainment, an alternative healing technique using binaural beats to induce relaxed or energized mental states.
In tandem with her sound practice, she received her doctorate in the sociology of sound from the University of Chicago in 2018. In 2022, she completed a postdoctoral research fellowship on sound and technology in the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala Universitet, Sweden, and she is an artist-in-residence at Q-O2 Brussels in 2025. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Technology/Sound Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. She creates and performs sonic landscapes utilizing cello, synthesizers, field recordings, and live radio to explore the mundane and profound possibilities of sound. She has presented work and performed at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Chicago Symphony Center, and Eckhart Park Pool.
Recent releases include The Ceiling Reposes on American Dreams Records and Normal Sounds on Moon Glyph. She was the 2023/24 Wave Farm Radio Art Fellow. Her work has been featured in Pitchfork, The Quietus, The Chicago Tribune, The Wire, and DownBeat Magazine, and on NPR, NTS Radio, Kunstradio, and WFMU.
Recent collaborative releases include duos with Macie Stewart (Astral Spirits), Honestly Same (Moon Glyph), and ZRL (American Dreams Records). As an improviser and collaborator, she has participated in cultural exchanges in Mexico, France, Germany, Denmark, China, and the UK, and toured on four continents. An active recording artist, she has arranged strings and recorded with Makaya McCraven, Circuit des Yeux, Steve Gunn, claire rousay, and Steve Hauschildt, among others.
As a sound and visual artist, she has presented gallery shows at Roman Susan Art Foundation and Experimental Sound Studios’ Audible Gallery. She has been a resident artist at ACRE, Vashon Artist Residency, High Concept Labs, dfbrl8r Performance Art Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Stanford University, and Mills College. She tours regularly with puppet theater company Manual Cinema.
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Macie Stewart is a musician and multi-disciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Heralded for their versatility, Stewart works with piano, violin, guitar, voice, and synthesizers, effortlessly traversing styles and scenes. Stewart is a distinguished, go-to collaborator who Pitchfork credits with “making some of the best tracks of the past five years transcendent.”
As a composer, Stewart’s work continues to dissolve the boundaries between disciplines. Aside from her debut record, Mouth Full of Glass released in 2021 on Orindal Records and re-released in 2022 on Full Time Hobby Records—Macie also composed a piece for Hubbard Street Dance’s film, Half of Us, alongside Sima Cunningham in 2021. That same year, they worked with Cunningham and Alex Grelle to produce a performance piece paying homage to Kate Bush.
In 2022, Stewart/Cunningham composed the score for a 50-piece orchestra premiering the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Before I Was. And in 2023, choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams enlisted Stewart to create a sound installation for her dreamlike performance piece, Hisako House. Most recently, Stewart was invited to compose a site-specific piece for the ESS Florasonic Installation at Lincoln Park Conservatory. As part of the longest-running sound installation in North America, their twenty-minute composition titled The World Doubles in Size played in the conservatory’s fern room from September through November of 2024.
In March of 2025, Stewart released When the Distance is Blue via International Anthem, an album that “folds prepared piano, string quartet, and field recordings into elegant expressions of nameless longing” (Pitchfork), and is “at once lulling and eerie” (New York Times).
