Weekend Residency #1 / Racer Session #556 | Mingjia Chen | Saturday January 14 & Sunday January 15, 2023

Racers! Improvisers! Fans of the avant!

We’ve arrived in 2023. Happy new year! We’re so excited to kick off this fresh calendar with not one, but TWO very special, back-to-back shows for you. In addition to the first Racer Session of the year on Sunday at 7pm, we’re also presenting a concert at The Chapel at Good Shepherd Center on Saturday at 8pm as part of our inaugural Weekend Residency, one of hopefully many to come this year and beyond!

We’ve talked a little about this program in the last couple of months: the hope is to bring someone into focus through the Racer Community and create opportunities for them to share their craft with all of us and all of you, by means of education, concerts, and good ol’ Racer Sessions. Our first artist in residence is the LA-based Mingjia Chen, vocalist / composer / pianist / delight.

On Saturday at 8pm, Mingjia will be collaborating on an evening of music with two of our local favorites, bassist Abbey Blackwell and violist Kayce Guthmiller. All three of these musicians excel in so many avenues of music - improvisation, composition and songwriting, folding their voices into their music - that we wanted to give them the opportunity to both combine all these elements as well as meld their songs together into one interweaving bill. This concert will take place at The Chapel at Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford as part of the Wayward Music Series, and admission will be sliding scale - but as with all our events, no one will be turned away for a lack of funds. And just a note on accessibility for this event: the elevator for GSC is currently being serviced (good!) and will not be available for use on Saturday night (bad!) - we’re sorry if this impedes your ability to join us, and we’ll be recording the concert so you can check it out later. If you can make it, know there will be some stairs to make it to the venue.

Racer Sessions remains fully ADA on Sunday at 7pm, as well as free and open to the public! For her Racer Session, Mingjia will be presenting a solo, no-effects set of music for voice. We’ve seen her do this sort of stuff in the past and it’s exactly why we wanted her to come up and take part in the residency, so do yourself a favor and make it out for the session on Sunday!