This Iowa City 'supergroup' is an unforgettable act. Meet the bandleaders behind the ensemble.

This is one of an ongoing series profiling creatives who’ve made an impact in the Iowa City area.

If you've seen a performance by Iowa City's Lex Leto x Christine Burke Ensemble, you know it's an experience.

Turns out, so is their rehearsal.

The six ensemble members gathered in a corner of a room at the Voxman Music Building one January evening, practicing a nearly six-minute song that, to the listener, is unpredictable.

Their instruments — including a saxophone, melodica and flute — emitted sometimes sharp, other times dissonant sounds.

Some of the musicians wandered about the space, one lowering to the floor with a small smile as the others stood around. Another grabbed a handful of pencils, the noise adding to the song.

This “supergroup,” as they've been dubbed, consists of Lex Letourneau, Christine Burke, Gabi Vanek, Justin Comer, Laura Canelo Cohen and Ramin Roshandel, all “classically trained musicians” who, in their words, “depart from their roots in favor of aleatory, noise, and song.”

You may recognize their names or have seen them perform in other gigs.

Comer is part of the Iowa City trio Wombat. Vanek founded Oxcart New Music, Little Village reported. Letourneau has performed with Elly Hofmaier, aka Penny Peach. Roshandel performed with Jean-François Charles at the Englert Theatre and the duo released an album. Burke has written for Duo Axis, among others, and Cohen is a recent University of Iowa alumnae who works at music4life in North Liberty.

More:Press-Citizen People to Watch for 2023: Iowa City's Penny Peach becoming a musical force

When they come together, their experimental, improvisatory, collaborative interests result in a theatrical, playful and compelling show that audiences at Iowa City's Mission Creek Festival, Gabe's, Public Space One and more have gotten the chance to experience.

If you've missed their shows, the ensemble is recording an album with a $1,000 grant from the Iowa Arts Council. Filmmaker Rachel Lazar is working on a film about the making of the album.

Now, bandleaders Burke and Letourneau, who performed as a duo for the opening night of the Refocus Film Festival in Iowa City, share how their paths led to an ensemble that embraces the unconventional and their musical interests.

Exploring the experimental and the improvisatory

It’s thanks to the experimental scene in Iowa City that Letourneau, who uses they/them pronouns, met Burke, getting involved in an ensemble that actually began in 2016.

Burke’s ensemble — a group of individuals with a shared interest in a contemporary, improvisational, experimental music — were booked for Comer’s monthly concert series iHearIC. Comer, who plays saxophones in the ensemble, introduced them as the Christine Burke Ensemble to the audience.

That’s how they got their name, he explained.

In 2021, the ensemble performed a show at Public Space One, and it’s that iteration of the ensemble that performs today.

But for their Mission Creek Festival performance, Letourneau’s name was added, and its remained that way since.

Rehearsing and recording the first three songs they wrote for their Mission Creek Festival submission Letourneau recalled as “magical.”

“I just remember feeling like, ‘Holy s***, we stumbled onto something here,” they said. “The way that everybody was just playing together and we were making something that we had never really heard before.”

The ensemble doesn’t just play. They perform.

Take “The Fly,” a song about Letourneau stuck inside, no sunlight and an annoying fly. On stage, Letourneau’s fellow ensemble members antagonize them. In one case, that meant bassoonist Vanek whispering into Letourneau’s ear using a brilliant Australian accent during their Mission Creek Festival performance.

“Lex always says that she has to practice not to laugh when we're around her at the center,” Vanek said in an email. “I had to see if I could make her crack and that silly voice was a good bet.”

In the piece, the ensemble members are improvising, though it’s not without direction.

“We've worked out — within the idea of improvising — what sounds work in this piece. What do we want to convey while we're improvising and what's the sequence of events,” Comer said. “It's not a completely ‘do whatever you want.’ It's like, do whatever you want within this structure and attempting to convey this idea to the audience.”

Collaboration is important to the ensemble. For example, while a song may begin with Letourneau’s written lyrics or melody, the ensemble members grow it through experimentation and suggestions, Burke explained.

And every piece the ensemble plays isn’t played the same way twice. Though the concepts remain the same, the exact sounds differ, Letourneau explained.

“You're experiencing something entirely new in the moment and it requires you to be incredibly present with yourself and with your ensemble members and they’re such skilled and intuitive musicians that that makes that really exciting,” they said. “You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen every time.”

Playing to each other's strengths

How is it that there are six people in Iowa City who share these music interests and come together to perform?

It's a question Letourneau and Burke ask themselves, though it could be explained away by a number of factors: programming such as Iowa City's Feed Me Weird Things, the university, fate or an agglomeration of things.

Like the other ensemble members, Burke and Letourneau are involved in projects outside the ensemble. But they write music that plays to the strengths of their ensemble.

In turn, the ensemble makes music that, in their words, makes listeners say, “Wow, I never thought I could sing along to music this weird!”

Rest assured that the ensemble doesn’t expect its audience to know what they’re getting into, if evident by the Iowa City music scene that supports the ensemble regardless of the level of familiarity people have with their music.

“What I found is that pretty much everyone that's into music in Iowa City is open to experiencing nearly anything,” Comer said.

How the ensemble fulfills different parts of Burke and Letourneau's interests

One of Burke’s earliest memories was listening to a Simon & Garfunkel album with headphones on.

“The experience of sound itself, it's something I think a lot about now in my own work,” she said. “Like so much for me is just about the experience of listening and like the pleasure of listening and that can get to be fairly subjective, I guess, but I think a lot of the sound material I end up picking in my own work — and this translates to work with the group too — but this is something I could listen to for six hours.”

Burke grew up in the Chicago suburbs before moving to Indiana as a high schooler. Music was part of Burke’s life early on. Her mother, a pianist, introduced she and her siblings to classical repertoire.

Her undergrad was at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. A clarinet player, composing grew as her passion because she got to create rather than just perform.

“I remember at somewhat of a younger age, realizing that I could think of sounds in my head, and that I could be completely in charge of directing wherever they go, which is like very opposite from my approach to composing now,” Burke said.

In her first few years of composing, Burke wanted to make every decision correctly. It wasn’t sustainable, she realized, because it meant that if there is one correct decision, everything else is wrong.

Being a rock star was Letourneau’s dream as a child, but insecurities and a crippling performance anxiety meant the band, something communal, was the more sensible option.

In spite of it, Letourneau forged on with performances, singing in high school choir to pulling aside peers at the University of Georgia to perform in front of and build their resolve.

It was also during college where Letourneau interrogated the idea of performance in a classical music setting, unsatisfied with how little the interaction was between performer and audiences.

For two longtime musicians exploring their craft, the ensemble fulfills what they know, and didn’t know, they needed.

For Burke, as a composer, the ensemble allows her to practice her artistic value: to not do the same thing. And she gets to do it with five other talented musicians on a consistent basis, their sound and approach never lacking in their integrity.

For Letourneau, it’s both an exploration and an assurance of their identity.

They knew they loved performing. But with the ensemble, they get to run around at Gabe’s yelling at people. They can be theatrical, a “part of myself that I hadn’t met yet.”

“Making music with Christine and our bandmates felt, for me, like coming home to something that I hadn't known was quite there for me,” Letourneau said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is it for me. This is the project that I've always needed to make.’”

Lex Leto x Christine Burke Ensemble

Known for: Up-and-coming experimental music group based in Iowa City that dabbles performance art.

What to look forward to: Their upcoming album.

Where to find them: Catch the members at these shows, including Burke at Public Space One Feb. 25, Comer and Vanek as part iHearIC at PS1 Feb. 26, and Comer and Burke at the James Theater March 7.

Paris Barraza covers entertainment, lifestyle and arts at the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Reach her at PBarraza@press-citizen.com or 319-519-9731. Follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.