It’s generally considered high praise to say that musicians have developed their own languages, but Audrey Chen and Phil Minton make nonpareil music by bypassing language altogether. Though their voices make all the sounds on the 2013 album By the Stream (Sub Rosa), there’s rarely a word to be heard. Instead they work with everything else a voice can do, wielding gasps, wheezes, coughs, belches, growls, gargles, gulps, snorts, and hums in wildly dynamic improvisations. At Constellation on Wednesday, January 31, they make their first-ever Chicago appearance as a duo.
Chen, who’s 36 years younger than Milton, came to improvisation after years of rigorous classical training, which began when she was eight. She grew up in Naperville and New Hampshire, then studied cello and voice at the Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University, and Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. In her mid-20s she shifted her focus from new music and early music to electronics, noise, and improvisation; since 2011 she’s split her time between Baltimore (where her now 17-year-old son lives) and Berlin.
