Join Metro Art Los Angeles for an evening of sublime and ethereal performances by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Gifted & Blessed in Union Station’s Historic Ticketing Hall.
- 8:00pm Doors open
- 8:30pm Gifted & Blessed
- 9:30pm Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
Program is FREE and open to the public. Seating will be on a first come, first served basis.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s formative years were spent communing with nature on Orcas Island in the northwest region of Washington state, a place she describes as “one of the most magical and peaceful places I have ever been.” Though she wouldn’t begin experimenting with modular synthesis until many years later, her creative wok continues to be infused with and inspired by the vitality and serenity of Orcas. Smith left the island to attend Berklee College of Music, where she studied composition and sound engineering, initially focusing on her voice as her primary instrument, before switching to classical guitar and piano. She employed many of the skills she refined in college in her indie-folk band Ever Isles, but a fateful encounter with a neighbor who lent her a Buchla 100 synthesizer, had a profound effect on her. Mesmerized by the Buchla’s potential, she explains “I got so distracted and enamored with the process of making sounds with it that I abandoned the next Ever Isles album.” Starting with rhythmic patterns and melodic pulses, she soon began sculpting lush and exciting worlds of sound.
Gabriel Reyes-Whittaker is an electronic musician, composer, producer, DJ and musical historian. He is most widely known for his work using the pseudonym GB (Gifted & Blessed). Though his music ranges widely stylistically, he classifies his work under the umbrella term “technoindigenous studies,” which is representative of the integration of the technological with the spiritual and ancestral. He uses an array of analog synthesizers as his primary means for musical communication.