We Went There: Clarice Jensen and Chuck Johnson at the Cedar

The latest collab show between Drone Not Drones and the Cedar Cultural Center was maybe the best yet, bringing together two ambient masters, Clarice Jensen and Chuck Johnson, who over nearly 2.5 hours performed both solo sets and a duet that filled the Cedar with the warmth and tranquility I think everyone in attendance needed.

The show started with a solo set by Chuck Johnson, a favorite of mine who I last saw in an unheated art space connected to a parking lot a few years back. While previous times I’ve seen him he was behind his trusty pedal steel guitar making ambient soundscapes, Monday’s show found him crafting worlds behind a table of synths, a slight change that he has been exploring on recent releases.

He created deep, celestial sounds that flowed slowly but powerful like lava venturing towards the surface. His music was slow but purposeful, with rich, ringing synths that sung out across quivering vibrations. As was the case throughout the evening, the room was dark and the musicians were cast in light from background screen of art that was as hypnotic as their sound. For Johnson’s set it looked like an oil painting in motion, mirroring the stoic but beautiful sounds Johnson was coaxing from his table of synths. 

Late a set he grabbed a Strat to pluck out some minimalist guitar that blended finger picked melodies into his wall of sound before ending his nearly 45 minute set with waves of ambient synths meshing with Cole Pulice-esqe waves of melancholy sax. For me personally I would have left content with Johnson’s set, but it was just the first of three sets of amazing music that would happen this evening.

Clarice Jensen opened her set with nice words about Minneapolis, with an aside that she usually doesn’t do much talking at her show. Luckily for her, the sweeping landscapes she creates from her cello don’t need words to build universes that are as expansive and powerful as any words in our verbal language.

Jensen spent her nearly hourlong set creating cinematic sweeps and swells, the deep tenor and brittle high ends of the instrument being bent across frequencies to achieve a sonic nirvana. Her background visuals were more active than Johnson’s, helping to shift perceptions and supplement her sound.

The set showed her songwriting chops (look up her CV, as it were, if you don’t know her work), making real-time soundtracks that equally soothed and agitated, never leaving a stone unturned. At times her sound took a darker, more sinister turn, creeping through shadows, but often it was a soporific symphony of sound that was fascinating to watch her create with just her cello and a pedal board. When her set concluded, she brought Johnson back up for a suite of music that combined the two artists sounds into one ocean wave of frequencies.

The final “set” was much shorter than the solo sets, but was a beautiful blend of their sounds towards a new creation. Jensen’s moody drone-influenced cello and Johnson’s twitchy synths created both synergy and tension, all with a red screen and eyeball hovering over their shoulders. 

It was a fitting close to a show that felt, at times, overwhelming and daunting in its scope, but also warm and loving. There were many moments where the music felt like it was transcending time and space, moving us beyond the room we all were sitting in at a time when the world is melting down all around us. It was a night that showed the power of ambient/drone music, both in healing and making space to sit with the pain, wonder and joy that we too often suppress and ignore in favor of looking at a screen.