SEVEN)SUNS

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SEVEN)SUNS is the first classical/metal/hardcore string quartet. Our repertoire is drawn from works by the members of the group, re-imagined string quartet versions of metal and hardcore songs, as well as music from the Western art music tradition that we decide fits our sound/time/place. 

SEVEN)SUNS has played The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge, The Cell Theater, Firehouse Space, Shapeshifter Lab, and The Knitting Factory. We’ll play a VFW hallif the promoter is cool. We’ll play a university, have a workshop with students and maybe jumpstart a discussion about how genres so seemingly varied like metal and classical can reflect ideas such as class identity and how ultimately such constructs and labels are false. We’ll play anywhere catharsis can happen. 

This is what SEVEN)SUNS has been up to recently: 

We did a cover Pantera’s “This Love/Domination” and a cover of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “43% Burnt”. The videos have received over 100,000 views combined and led to features on numerous heavy metal websites such as Metal Injection, SkullsandBones.com, and MetalSucks.net, among others.

This, in turn, has led to a collaboration with The Dillinger Escape Plan. We recorded string parts on a few songs on their upcoming album and as such, will be featured on it. As a fan, I can barely restrain myself from writing this in all caps. 

We’ve worked with the composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, performing his work “A Civil Rights Reader as Democratic Vistas” featuring the writer and poet Carl Hancock Rux.

We’ve also enjoyed a residency at the chamber music retreat, Avaloch Farm, last year and count ourselves lucky enough to be invited to return this coming summer.

As far as upcoming events, in the works are shows this fall and winter at Rockwood in NYC, the metal club St. Vitus and The Bad Room in the Good Room in Brooklyn.

SEVEN)SUNS recently received a generous grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to write and perform a piece tentatively titled “Songs of the Voiceless” based on our visits to Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York City. We have been volunteering there playing music for inmates in conjunction with the Rangjung Dharma Prison Project- a Tibetan Buddhist organization whose mission is to teach meditation and provide guidance to inmates. 

SEVEN)SUNS is:

Amanda Lo: violin
Earl Maneein and Fung Chern Hwei: violin and viola
Jennifer DeVore: cello