EMILY RACH BEISEL: Chicago Avant Woodwind Artist/Composer To Release Second LP, Sumptuous Branching, April 10th Via Amalgam; “Cantilevers” Single, Performance Video, Preorders, Tour Dates Posted

photo by Peter Gannushkin

Soloist EMILY RACH BEISEL unveils the details of her alluring and introspective second album, Sumptuous Branching, through Chicago’s avant/exploratory label Amalgam in April.

EMILY RACH BEISEL is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, educator, curator, and woodwind specialist. Known for visceral performances, blending extended vocal and instrumental techniques with analogue electronics, their music centers on the bass clarinet and incorporates voice, electronics, extended techniques, and other wind instruments creating a complex and nuanced soundscape in which the origins of sounds are often obscured. A Jazz Noise wrote, “heavy stuff, sounds retrieved from the deeper places… BEISEL pokes around in the sonic depths and brings leviathans out to play.” BEISEL holds a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University, is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 10-208 and is honored to be a 2024 3Arts Awardee in Music.

Sumptuous Branching sees EMILY RACH BEISEL performing all music, with bass clarinet, vocals, piccolo, and electronics coalescing in a singular, intriguing, somewhat theatrical flow. The album was recorded at Marmalade in Chicago by Bill Harris, mixed by Harris and BEISEL, mastered by Edward Hamel, and completed with artwork by mrfox.img and design by Harris and BEISEL.

With the first preview of the album, “Cantilevers,” BEISEL writes, “It’s impossible to escape thinking about architecture with chant – it is designed to exist in cavernous, resonant spaces. The first single from Sumptuous Branching is named after cantilevers, structures that stretch outward without support at their far end. While working on this, I was reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s House Of Leaves and thinking about the structural impossibility of the book’s labyrinth and its endless repetition. The track takes the form of layered lines that stretch forward and overlap but never resolve at a single point of arrival; there is no shared endpoint where they meet. For me, this resonates with chant: voices that may begin together but continue along their own trajectories. A kind of chant that doesn’t loop back on itself, does not end.”

EMILY RACH BEISEL’s “Cantilevers” is now streaming at Bandcamp HERE and an intimate performance video of the track is playing on YouTube HERE.

Sumptuous Branching will be issued on LP and digital platforms through Amalgam on April 10th. Find preorders at Bandcamp HERE and the label webshop HERE.

Sumptuous Branching Track Listing:
1. Introit
2. To Rise In Arms
3. Cantilevers
4. Hollow Ships
5. Her Still Singing Limbs
6. We Who Behold The Bright Surface
7. Sumptuous Branching

A Midwest tour supporting the album has also been booked, with clusters of dates running from April 9th through May 11th, including a hometown release show for the album on April 10th, the day of the album’s release, with Mute Duo. See the confirmed dates below and expect additional live updates over the weeks ahead.

EMILY RACH BEISEL Sumptuous Branching Midwest Release Tour 2026:
4/09/2026 Harper College – Palatine, IL
4/10/2026 Constellation – Chicago, IL * LP Record Release Show w/ Mute Duo
4/26/2026 Woodland Pattern – Milwaukee, WI
4/29/2026 Ziggy’s – Ypsilanti, MI
4/30/2026 Tranzac – Toronto, ON w/ Patrick O’Reilly
5/01/2026 Zula Presents – Hamilton, ON
5/02/2026 Sellers & Newel – Toronto, ON
5/03/2026 Trinosophes – Detroit, MI
5//07/2026 Rozz Tox – Rock Island, IL
5/08/2026 PS1 – Iowa City, IA
5/09/2026 Carnegie Art Center – Mankato, MN
5/10/2026 The Pattern Room – Minneapolis, MN w/ Liz Draper
5/11/2026 University of Minnesota – Minneapolis, MN
5/12/2026 Art Lit Lab – Madison, WI

“Sumptuous Branching is born from late medieval chant. This is the thread that runs through the record – multiple voices that are both intertwined and independent,” EMILY RACH BEISEL reveals. “Early chant doesn’t have strictly codified rules in place yet, so it has a wild freedom and rich density that I find so compelling. The work in Sumptuous Branching is my imagining of this replete style in my own voice. Each track represents a different facet of that imagining, with the tracks themselves functioning as distinct voices within a larger chorus. Performing chant as a single musician posed a challenge I found provocative, and each track explores the tension between solo performance and the interplay of many voices, considering what it means to contain multitudes.”

The movements captured on Sumptuous Branching were inspired by the likes of Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s The Iliad, Guillaume de Machaut’s La Messe de Nostre Dame – the first complete, unified setting of the Mass – and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House Of Leaves.

BEISEL continues, “As my sophomore solo album, I approached this process differently than my first record. The album is conceived as a unified set that can be performed live – I toured the material before recording it, with the session taking place after my Spring 2025 tour. I love albums that offer an intentional journey and reward listening from beginning to end. This record very much falls into that category, and it’s my offering to others who value that kind of experience.”