Aaron Kisslinger (they/them/their) was a Musician-in-Residence at Fabric of Life, in partnership with Bassett Road Homestead LLC. They stayed on the land at Bassett Road for most of February and the early part of March, taking time and space away to organize their next steps after the pandemic unraveled their travel and performance plans for the past year.

Aaron grew up in New York City in the Bronx – Riverdale, to be exact, and has been playing music for as long as they can remember. Their childhood was filled with opportunities to be connected to music from Eastern Europe, including Balkan music, as well as the Jewish music scene. For them, music and community have always been an intertwined experience. 

From there they went to Oberlin College in Ohio and studied music as communal social change, exploring how music is connected to transmission of identity through various oral history interviews. These days they write, sing, produce, create original pop music, and play in brass both in the Roman/Balkan style and in the New Orleans Second Lines style. They are constantly trying to find the bridges between different cultures in their music, regardless of the style they are playing in, noting that other styles and traditions always inform their work. 

Aaron grew up Jewish Reconstructionist, which was largely about individual interpretation with the essence of asking questions without the hierarchical infrastructure. The biggest draw for them in this religion, as a young adult, was the music. Their father drummed for chanting and it was there that they learned how to blow the shofar – an experience that later became the basis of building relationships to the horns that they now play. This was Aaron’s ancestral lineage, but it didn’t become meaningful until they became older and were able to recognize it for themself and begin to own it within their own musical endeavors. 

When asked about folk traditions and their time at Fabric of Life, Aaron talked about the parallels they see between their music and the folk traditions that we teach here. For them, the parallel is found within the transmission of collective folk traditions and how to reinterpret them and express yourselves within them; this is similar to what they see in their explorations in music-making.

In their own practice, Aaron sees music as an act of self-liberation – as a queer person, as someone who is not taking any of the practices of the collective culture at face value and is able and happy to take a step back to think about how they want to embody this. They view creating as an act of freeing themselves regardless of what is being made or if it is being shown to others. Music is intangible and powerful in their experience, holding an enormous power that can’t be taken away, something that can both be deeply personal and hold emotional resonance that also feeds the collective. 

Aaron named being able to be a Musician-in-Residence for Fabric of Life as a privilege; having grown up in a city and spent most of their life making music in an apartment, being able to walk out into the field and play their horn, or take a walk in the woods and then return to the cabin and records what has been written, was both enjoyable and filled with freedom. And being surrounded by the patterning, geometry and symmetry of Scandinavian textiles inside of the cabin, created with such care, also served to inspire them in their time in the residency. It was also an opportunity to drive home the reality of what it takes to sustain life, as they took on learning how to chop wood for the woodstove that kept the cabin warm and other similar life skills to support caring for themselves while staying at Bassett Road. 

We considered it a tremendous opportunity to be able to host Aaron for a residency this winter, feeling strongly that the future of many traditions are in the hands of the younger generations. Aaron’s commitment to their craft, to exploring the cultures and supporting the origins of these traditions, and to reinterpreting it to create a collective experience, lie at the heart of our mission for Fabric of Life. We are thankful that they were able to have the space and time to reflect on their next steps and to once again fill the world with their music and we look forward to seeing what comes next for this young and talented musician.

Video interview with Musician-in-Residence, Aaron Kisslinger:

Connect with Aaron:
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A few of the pieces Aaron created or released during their time at Fabric of Life: