Sophia Subbayya Vastek and John Davis (Folk Implosion)

ARTIST BIOS:

Activist/Educator/Musician John Davis is half of the duo Folk Implosion, that he co-founded with Lou Barlow in 1993. Folk Implosion songs have been featured on various film soundtracks, (Kids, Adaptation,) soundtrack albums, (American Beauty, A Life Less Ordinary) and TV shows, (The People vs. OJ Simpson, NFL on Fox, 20/20, The Today Show, Pepsi, Where’s My Jet.) The works they recorded for the Larry Clark and Harmony Korine film Kids are being re-released by Domino Records in September of 2023. Joyful Noise has also been reissuing their first album, Take a Look Inside, on analog formats this year. John's recent solo project is an album called Love In the Time of Capital recorded with members of the Indie Pop band Lake at Unknown Recording Studio in Anacortes, WA.

Sophia Subbayya Vastek

Described as performing with "passion and profound tenderness” (Second Inversion) and “serene strokes and lyrical beauty” (Brooklyn Rail), pianist and songwriter Sophia Subbayya Vastek moves quietly between musical worlds. For over fifteen years, she has developed an intuitive, dynamic playing style that’s rooted in both improvisational exploration and her classical training. The resulting music is ethereal and cinematic, blossoming into neoclassical/ ambient-inspired soundscapes that range from whisper-soft echoes to expressive cascades. Independent Clauses has described her music as: "Ghostly, delicate, elegant..." A musician since childhood — growing up with parents who were also pianists — Sophia has always felt deeply connected to the piano. Her music is often directly inspired by her ancestry and generational story-telling, as well as the diverse communities and genres she’s connected to. Sophia also maintains a close working relationship with her husband, audio engineer and multi-instrumentalist Sam Torres, with whom she’s co-produced albums and created electronic/ambient tracks like Ghost in the Square. 

Her most recent LP, In Our Softening (2022), produced by Torres, features nine beguiling piano compositions, each track a part of a thoughtfully woven tapestry. The album has been called “a tender and revelatory balm" by editors at I Care If You Listen, “heaven on earth” (Sun 13), and “one of the very best things I've heard all year” by longtime music journalist Steve Smith (Night After Night). Her debut album, Histories (Innova Recordings, 2017) was produced by Grammy-winning engineer Adam Abeshouse, and described as “a beautiful mosaic of the larger cultural intersections of our world, and how we weave those histories together through music” (Second Inversion). She also released an EP of the complete solo piano works by composer Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), entitled Lili (2020, reissued 2023). In 2022, Sophia was recognized as a composer by the New York State Council on the Arts and New York Foundation For the Arts (NYSCA/NYFA) as a Music/Sound Fellow, a statewide program focused on the evolution of contemporary art. She is also a co-founder of Organ Colossal, a nonprofit that produces local musical events and community-oriented music projects in her hometown of Troy, NY, where she currently lives in a converted church with her husband and their two cats, MagnifiCAT and Bella.