Bio

Sadie Powers is a bassist, an improviser, a sound artist, a researcher, and an interdisciplinary collaborator based in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a founding member of Triptychs, a musique concrète ambient duo, and Eko Chamber Collective, an improvisational electroacoustic ensemble. She has been the touring bassist for Shearwater (Sub Pop) since 2015. Her composition, Wick (for French horn, water glasses, and electronics), which explores the nature of gaslighting by intentionally creating and requiring that the performers respond to an exploited unequal power dynamic, was recorded in Spring 2018 by the avant-garde trio How Things Are Made and appears on the trio’s album, HTAM S3E09. In 2019, Powers collaborated with PearlArts Studios, sound artist Bonnie Jones, and visual artist Barbara Weissberger on sound design for sym., a dance piece inspired by Octavia Butler’s vampire novel, Fledgling, and she composed and performed the score for Linkt, a dance film by Joy-Marie Thompson and Sherah Shipman, about the complicated relationship between a Black woman and a white woman. She has performed with members of Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Thor & Friends, Lucy Dacus, Battle Trance, Shadow Age, How Things Are Made, and The Real Sea, and serves on the board of directors for Girls Rock! Pittsburgh. Powers is currently researching, writing, and recording her first solo record, entitled Spolia, a meditation upon the nuances of queer rage and desire, inspired by and in conversation with the works of Elizabeth Grosz, Louise Bourgeois, and her 100-year-old house, which she is slowly renovating.