Alex Koi x Kirin McElwain is a duo of original music for voice, cello, and modular synthesizer. They will be bringing their original piece "Wake" to this year's Evolution Festival. Floating between through-composed structures and free improvisation, their music explores themes of death, non-belonging, and dreams.

Forget-Me-Nots is an evocative meditation on memory, migration and farewell, where award-winning cellist, vocalist, and composer Ceridwen McCooey performs a richly textured work that explores the emotions of saying goodbye, not only to people, but to places, homes, and moments in time.

Named after the delicate blue flower long associated with remembrance and faithfulness, Forget-Me-Nots draws inspiration from the medieval legend born from a moment of love and loss. This enduring symbol of memory weaves throughout the performance, shaping a collection of music that approaches loss not solely as sorrow, but as something worthy of appreciation, born from moments forged in love.

A first-generation Australian from a Irish/Welsh family, McCooey spent her childhood moving between Australia and Ireland before relocating to New York as an adult. This lifelong transience permeates the album, imbuing it with a sensitivity to displacement, belonging, and the quiet accumulation of farewells that accompany a migrant life.

Written for solo cello, voice, and looping pedals, the eight-track album features variations on traditional songs Ceridwen grew up singing, including Wild Mountain Thyme (Irish/Scottish), A Stór Mo Chroí (Irish), and Ah, Poor Bird (English), alongside original, non-vocal compositions. Classical influences from Jean Sibelius and Maurice Ravel merge and weave with familiar folk tunes, reflecting McCooey’s background as a classically-trained cellist immersed in traditional song and story-telling. The result is a distinctive and deeply emotional sound world.