The historic North Pinckney hotel continues a reinvigorated commitment to hosting live music on Friday, December 1.
Pianist Emili Earhart, indie-folk act Def Sonic, and the improvisational ambient duo Tropopause—made up of Caryatids members Mike Noto and Terrance Barrett—will all perform Friday, December 1, at Mansion Hill Inn. (Full disclosure: Earhart and Noto have both contributed freelance work to Tone Madison.)
Admission is $15 and the show is set to run from 8 to 10 p.m.
Recently, the boutique North Pinckney Street hotel has flashed a renewed desire to host live music, thanks in large part to Barrett’s efforts as the hotel’s general manager. Barrett’s commitment to music goes far beyond the scope of his involvement in Tropopause. He also runs the recording and practice space Mobius Glen, plays in shoegaze act Cult Of Lip (along with Earhart), and has been involved in numerous other Madison-based projects over the last 10 years. If anyone could spearhead a musical project that doubles as a seismic cultural shift for the hotel, it’d be Barrett.
“We started launching smaller, public facing events to break down barriers to entry to the space,” says Barrett in an email to Tone Madison. In that same message, Barrett noted that the Inn is also running a monthly jazz and cocktails event series that is open to the general public, who may not otherwise seek out the historic luxury hotel. The upcoming ambient night digs even further into easing the perception that the hotel is only for deep-pocketed out-of-towners.
The Inn’s ambient night is being billed as “an evening of ambient music, community, and whimsy,” and that framing is both pointed and apt. Given Barrett’s expressed intention behind curating and cultivating the event and the assembled roster of musicians, all of those beats will be hit. By incorporating figures who are actively involved with Madison’s punk community, the lineup caters to a wider crowd, breaking down that barrier of entry. Considering their stature within multiple musical communities in Madison, the performers also represent a small, shared community of musicians with intertwined interests. Each act, in their own way, is prone to bouts of whimsy, which can be read as an essential tenet of both ambient and improvisational music.
For Def Sonic, that whimsy exists in the project’s rich, textured vocal arrangements and dreamlike musical aesthetic. For Earhart, it’s flights of fancy in her interpolations of classical composers, playfully tweaked to align more neatly with her artistic sensibilities. And for Tropopause, it lies in the duo’s improvisational nature, which teased out a handful of grin-inducing moments on the 2020 release Codex Concertina. All of the musicians on hand for the evening have an adept touch, no matter the genre.
The occasion will mark Tropopause’s live debut, so while I can’t speak to the specific details of the project’s live show, I can attest firsthand to Barrett and Noto’s strong musical connection in Caryatids. (It should also be noted that Barrett and Earhart have displayed a similarly strong connection as bandmates in Cult Of Lip.) Earhart’s playing is always a joy to take in, and her solo performance at Common Sage’s 2022 celebration of the winter solstice was a live music experience I continue to cherish. Def Sonic’s set during the 2022 iteration of Make Music Madison ranks as one of the most startling and spellbinding introductions to a local artist that I’ve had in recent memory. Grouping all three together on a bill at a venue like Mansion Hill Inn will make for an incredibly enticing opportunity that’s bound to deliver something truly memorable.