ABOUT

(Collage by Grant Corum)
White Gourd explores the depths of the tarot as metaphorical exploration in the form of music performances using a variety of found objects, gongs, 78 player, piano and audio cassette loops.  Accompanied with a full visual installation, and often ritual costume, the presence of each performance has a completely different affect with the chosen card for the evening or tour. White Gourd is the solo work of Suzanne Stone.  In addition to being a visual artist, herbalist, teacher, master gardener, and bee keeper, she is well known for involvement as vocalist & saxophonist in the experimental ensemble Million Brazilians.

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"White Gourd’s Suzanne Stone makes ritual performance art combining disjointed sounds, left field avant sax freak outs, and machete wielding incantations, to command her audience in her conceptual tarot pieces, which bring to life deep rooted cosmological convictions."
 -  Matthew Henderson, M.A.S.S. organizer 

"Whether on her own or as a part of Million Brazilians, Suzanne Stone is a live artist you can’t take your eyes off of. The shows of hers that I have seen lead me to believe that that’s just the way she wants it. She has no fear of wandering offstage and staring her audience down, usually carrying two swords that she clangs together dramatically. Stone is going deeper into her musical/theatrical exploration of the tarot tonight. You’d do well to follow her on her journey."

- Robert Ham  

"Dressed up like The Devil, and with a large backdrop of the tarot card looming above her, White Gourd gave one of the most mesmerizing performances this year. Many have done, and will continue probably forever, the whole solo performance helped by a chain of loop pedals thing, but dude! This had gongs! And chanting about how "the devil made me do it!" And just when it got real freaky, she made it rain on the audience with fake money bearing anti-capitalist messaging. Hell yeah."  - Rachel, Debacle Records "Best of 2014 Shows"
@ (Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, Seattle, WA - March 14th) 

(Poster by Grant Corum)
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"Her set was one of the most theatrical and expressive I’ve ever seen. Suzanne Stone stalked the room, clanging swords together and daring onlookers to blink. On stage, she read processed voice poetry and sang fluttering anthems to a tarot card. I was pleased then when I booked Million Brazilians at a recent show that she has combined forces with that group, and that she was selling a new White Gourd LP, of which this track is a small piece. The inspiration behind this recording is The Moon card, which Stone sings of (on this piece, anyway) over a sun-dappled run of piano notes. Her voice stands firm over the flickering melodies, a lunar salutation of unusual power."
- www.experimentalportland.com

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"Suzanne Stone is known for her abrasive sax & voice in the esoteric jazz trio Million Brazilians, however Stone approaches her unique solo performances as White Gourd from a very different angle often involving dreamy saxophone, neo-Nico vocals and haunting key textures as a ritual tapestry of tarot-influenced blessings. 'Hermit La Lune', her latest LP on Psychic Sounds, contains a very eerie spectral landscape from which sings spells of solitude and seasonal cycles over waves of bells, water animal wails, sword sharpening and etheric piano work seamlessly through this timeless witchy advancement."
-AJ/ psychicsoundsblogspot.com

(Photo by Rebecca Price)