WINTER FAMILY + EVE ESSEX

Winter Family occupies a special place in the French and Israeli artistic scene. Ruth and Xavier met in Jaffa in Israel, and since, they have developed an rough, saturated, minimal universe playing with codes and pacts. At first with their concerts around the world of an unforgettable intensity in clubs, museums (Le Louvre, Le Palais de Tokyo, Art Basel), squats and churches (St Ann & The Holy Trinity in NYC, Dormition in Jerusalem, Ste Eustache in Paris). And since 2012 also with the duo's documentary theatre, radical and controversial performances that raises burning questions without ever providing answers while resolutely placing the audience in an awkward position. Their theater shows are produced by Vidy Lausanne theatre, the MC93, Avignon Festival, National Theater of Brittany. Photo by Shlomi Yosef.

Eve Essex is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Brooklyn, NY. Primarily a woodwind player, she employs a wide instrumentation including saxophone, flutes, and voice, supported with live processing, beds of synthesizers, drum machine, and other sounds. Operating between songwriting, composition, and instrumental improvisation, her work slides easily from structured electronic pop to open-ended melodic explorations. Her practice has spanned media and genres over time-- from installation and performance art to the prog, jazz, electronic, and electroacoustic ideas explored with collaborative ensembles Das Audit, Hesper, and HEVM. Placing emphasis on live execution, her recordings and performances are characterized by both ardent focus and spirited unpredictability.

Essex’s debut solo album, Here Appear, was jointly released by Soap Library (cassette) and Sky Walking (LP) in 2018. Other recordings have appeared on compilations by PAN, Sky Walking, Untergang Institut, and Wild Flesh Productions. Select solo performances include Artists Space, e-flux Bar Laika, Fridman Gallery, ISSUE Project Room, KAJE, Outpost Artists Resources, Safe Gallery, and Wendy's Subway in New York; Rhizome, Washington D.C., Meakusma Festival, Eupen, Belgium; the PUFFERS Festival, Providence, RI; and ACUD Macht Neu, Berlin, Germany. Her collaborations Das Audit and Essex Olivares have both presented commissioned performances for SculptureCenter, New York. As a guest instrumentalist she has recently contributed to works by The God In Hackney, Peter Gordon & Love of Life Orchestra, James K, Kevin Kenkel, Liturgy, Colin Self, and Peter Zummo.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"...So vivid, so suggestive an invitation into another reality, so iridescent with spiritual menace you feel like you’re being inculcated into a cult of which Eve Essex is both martyr and avatar. You’d be best advised to follow wherever she goes next." 

- The Wire

"Winter Family are a world in itself, a stunning world like a nature reserve and at the same time as foreign, scary and demanding as a forest in the dead of night." -Avi Pitchon, Haaretz

"...Winter Family's songs touch on topics like war and religious zealotry....Brittle pianos or velvety harmonium create twinkles and warmth—every track feels like it could crumble, presumably because the world can." -The Village Voice

"Winter Family doesn’t explore the non-sense of the world but rather the sense of the no world..." 

-Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes, Mouvement Magazine

"...The 'mass' experience completes in an apotheosis, in a shout of the pipe organ and with a cry "us, the alive!" We exit the church converted into Winter Family...” Marie Lechner, -Liberation.