Noe Venable made her name in the San Francisco music scene with five fine albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s, moved to New York and finished college, went on to Harvard Divinity School, and managed to find time to release two more albums, become a Waldorf teacher, and have a baby. She unplugged for a while, and stopped listening to much in the way of recorded music. “Instead,” she says, “I joined a chorus, and even led a few. I fell in love with what it feels like to sing with people in a room, how alive it is, a song just breathing in the air between you all, raising you up with its beauty.” Now she’s headed to the Freight to celebrate the release of her brand new album, Cascadia, which she describes as “13 luminous songs, wrested from the earth and nearly ready for their reveal.” The album is an expression of what she’s learned over these last few years, celebrating connection with the natural world, the quiet power of human resourcefulness, and the discovery, amidst the challenges of modern life, of what you can trust.
 
 “There is no one like Noe Venable,” says the website PureMusic.com. “It’s about the magic, about the art, and about beauty.” Noe currently lives in Brooklyn, where she enjoys writing, teaching, home recording, and leading several choruses. When not occupied with these things, she can often be found exploring Prospect Park with her young son, Ember. Tonight, though, she’ll be at the Freight for the reveal. Expect something experimental, haunting, and poetic. Or don’t expect anything. Just open yourself up to the music and see what happens!

Odessa Chen grew up in Baltimore, the daughter of a physicist and a painter, formed her first band in Tucson at the University of Arizona, where she studied cello and classical choral music, and moved to the Bay Area, where she has become an acclaimed singer, songwriter, and guitarist. “Her dreamscapes evoke a complex depth of feeling,” says the SF Weekly. “Ambiguity and surprising connections in her lyrics keep listeners riveted.” The East Bay Express praises her “haunting” voice – “a high, sweet wisp of sound, sometimes no more than a whisper.” She has been featured on MTVU and NPR, and is currently at work on her fourth album, tentatively titled Giving Up the Ghosts.

Visit Noe Venable's website