Mai Khoi & Pete Drungle: In The Ruins at Joe's Pub at The Public

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Mai Khoi & Pete Drungle: In The Ruins
Premieres DECEMBER 8 at 8pm ET via Joe's Pub YouTube and The Public Theater Website.

A few months ago, a project was born between two musicians who have never met. Mai Khoi is a Vietnamese pop star turned dissident singer living in NYC. Pete Drungle is a Berlin-based neoclassical free jazz pianist. Connected by nothing but a Zoom call and a life-long devotion to music, these artists searched the depths of each other's souls for shared meaning and beauty. "In the Ruins" is the result of this trans-Atlantic, genre-splicing collaboration.

Mai Khoi is a Vietnamese artist and activist. She rose to stardom in 2010 after winning the Vietnam Television song and album of the year awards. Her new sound is an emotionally-charged fusion of free jazz and ethnic Vietnamese music, with her most political, yet personal, song lyrics ever. Today, she leads efforts to promote freedom of artistic expression in Vietnam for which she was awarded the Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent. Her activism has, however, come at a high price. She has had her concerts raided, been evicted from her house, and has been detained and interrogated by the police. Mai Khoi is an artist in residence at SHIM NYC and an Artist Protection Fund fellow.

Pete Drungle is an award-winning composer, pianist, and producer living in New York City. He has made music with Ornette Coleman, Yoko Ono, Les Claypool, The Kronos Quartet, Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Sean Lennon, Craig Harris and many others. As pianist, Drungle is an intrepid, adventurous improviser - possibly best known for his 24-HOUR CONTINUOUS SOLO PIANO IMPROVISATION. Wire magazine's Alan Licht remarked, "...Drungle's epic event pushed well beyond the limits usually imposed by the customary concert timetable; that he was still functioning at a high level of creativity after 23 hours of continuous playing pays new testimony to the improvisational mindset." Pete's music compositions, performances and sound installations have been exhibited at Centre Georges Pompidou (Fr), MoCA (Los Angeles), the Whitney Biennial (NYC), The Cannes Film Festival (Fr), The Serpentine Gallery (UK), Wundergrund Festival (Dk), TransArt Festival (It), Chapter Arts, Wales (UK), Le Confort Moderne (Fr), The Kitchen (NYC), Performa Biennials 07, 09, 11 and 13 (NYC), Merce Cunningham Theatre (NYC), The Warsaw Jazz Festival (Pl), Alterna Jazz Festival (Mx), The United Nations (NYC), and many other music festivals worldwide.