LaToya Kent & Jenna Fournier
Cleveland Rocks: Past Present Future presents Wednesday Songs & Stages, a live stream concert series supporting 10 Northeast Ohio Music Relief Fund grant recipients and the local venues like The Grog Shop, that have historically provided opportunities for our Cleveland musicians. The series has been funded by the Ohio Arts Council, partially sponsored by Evergreen Podcasts, and made possible with generous support from Gotta Groove Records and Visible Voice Books.
Live Streamed from the Happy Dog on October 28, 2020.
Here’s a little bit about the featured artists CRPPF has supported with the Northeast Ohio Music Relief Fund and continue to support with its Wednesday Songs and Stages programming:
LaToya Kent is a multi media artist. Singer, songwriter, producer, writer, visual artist and birth worker. She lives to be free in her expression as a brown bodied human on the planet aiding expansion by example. LaToya threads her vision throughout everything she touches artistically. She believes that to be, is the gateway to fullness.
Jenna Fournier is an American singer-songwriter best known for fronting the shoegazey rock band NIIGHTS. She describes her solo work as taking a more stripped-down and intimate approach, providing a personal outlet for story-telling and sound experimentation, involving electric guitar, a looper, and multiple fx pedals to create layers of texture wrapped around what she refers to as ‘sad little fairy songs.’ She cites Grouper, The Cure, CocoRosie, Sigur Rós, Johanna Newsom, Grimes, Slowdive, MBV, and Múm as a few influences and inspirations. Between her releases with NIIGHTS, Fournier released her debut solo EP, Small Reflections, exclusively in Japan in 2014, followed by a second EP, The Little Dreamer, also exclusively in Japan in 2017, both in conjunction with an international tour and 2670 Records. She is currently working on her first self-recorded and self-produced solo LP. Fournier is also a painter and visual artist. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Nashville, and she has produced music videos for both herself and NIIGHTS, taking a DIY approach to stop-motion, animation, and mixed-media video art. Her dream-like and often surreal visuals are sometimes incorporated into her live performances.