Alter Ego is an experimental duo consisting of pianists Mabel Kwan and Sharon Udoh.

Photo credit: Joshua Hurley

Sharon Udoh is a Nigerian-American pianist, composer, arranger, and based in Chicago. Their performances have been described as a warm bowl of soup, a tornado, a bulldozer, magnetic, and kind. Her collaborators have included clipping, Tune-Yards, Cristal Sabbath, Ben Lamar Gay, Jamila Woods, Angel Bat Dawid, and in this particular instance, Mabel Kwan.

Mabel Kwan is fascinated by sounds, contradictions, and our perception of what is familiar and strange. With a style that is detached and objective but highly personal and spirited, Mabel brings a quiet intensity to her live performances. She plays piano, accordion, and in this particular instance, synthesizer. She is a Chinese-American performer and improviser based in Chicago, Illinois.

Chad Kouri (band leader) is a Chicago-based sound and vision artist interested in the healing powers of color, sound, and abstraction. His mixed-race identity is mirrored by his multidisciplinary studio practice with interests focusing broadly on visual communication, improvisation, radical joy, social justice and community empowerment, and Chicago's monumental history of resistance music and the avant-garde. At any given time, his studio contains a continuum of works-in-progress ranging from public art, paintings, homemade instruments, recordings, publishing projects, ongoing research, curatorial projects, and more. Utilizing a wide range of skills and strategies, Kouri reminds us to stay curious and make time for play, rest, and introspection, enabling us to have more bandwidth for personal and communal grounding, awareness, and empowerment.