Alpaca 2025

For Alpaca Festival, UDAGAN will perform “Biological Machines”

Saydyy Kuo will perform spoken word vocals in both English and in her native language (Sakha) over an evolving group-improvisational algorithmic/organic soundscape, performed by live coder Oscar South and jazz pianist Samuel Wilson Wain. The poetry is broken up by instrumental interludes where Saydyy will join the musical texture on the Sakha Khomus (jaw harp).

Themes include patterns in human behavior and culture, which resonate and converge through locations and time periods to define the interfaces through which humans engage with and embody community.

Biographies

UDAGAN trio (Saydyy-Kuo Fedorova, Oscar South, Samuel Wilson Wain) unites circumpolar musical influences, poetry, live coding built on a generative deterministic harmony engine written by Oscar, and contemporary jazz piano, into a single cohesive performance.

Saydyy-Kuo Fedorova: Master performer and PhD researcher of the Sakha khomus, Saydyy-Kuo has toured internationally with multiple ensembles including Ayarkhaan, with whom she performed at WOMAD as well as BBC Proms Albert Hall for the Human Planet concert series in 2011.

Oscar South: Folk/world multi-instrumentalist, music theory navigator and music technology innovator, Oscar, also a 2011 WOMAD performer, brings his flourish as a composer to the stage through captivating performances on modular synthesizers and guitar-based instruments.

Samuel Wilson Wain: Legendary Sheffield-based jazz pianist, session musician and composer, Samuel brings improvisational mastery and off-the-hip harmonic innovation to the stage. His deeply expressive playing draws from jazz tradition while fearlessly venturing into contemporary and cross-genre worlds of sound.