See Uno Lady’s Improv Performance at SPACES + Arbor Aria Update

On April 4, at SPACES, I had the honor of collaborating with Steve Parker’s installation, Fight Song.

This incredible installation used an EEG brain monitor to translate my brainwaves into a live musical composition that plays through the suspended instruments. I started the performance with a mindful meditation and belted improv accapella vocals live with the installation. Singing starts around 6 minutes in. Read CAN Journal’s review of the opening here

In other news, I have started creating chapter two of my latest project, Arbor Aria. I’ve been using an instrument called PlantWave to record electronic signals from old-growth trees and create compositions with the MIDI signals.

I recently connected with the creators of PlantWave and am lucky to become an ambassador. Thank you! Check out the PlantWave and hear your plants sing. This link will automatically get your 10% off your purchase. 

This second chapter of Arbor Aria will be an interactive installation too and all the chapters will eventually be a video album. I have a few songs written from my trip to Washington and the Hoh Rainforest. I have a few more forest recording trips planned to gather more data in the coming months.  

This chapter of Arbor Aria is supported by The Creative Impact Fund, administered by Assembly for the Arts and funded by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. This artist was awarded the Ohio Arts Council’s Artist Opportunities for 2025-2026. Thank you for your generous support. I am so grateful! 

Project Premiere! Show 8/28 at Akron Art Museum + 9/5 at Akron Soul Train for a sound + video installation

I was fortunate to be awarded an artist residency with Akron Soul Train. I’ve been working on a two-part project all year, and the premiere is just a few weeks away.

The first part of the mission was to record my upcoming album. I spent the first half of the year in the studio, and while vinyl production takes time, I hope to have the records ready for you in 2026.

You can hear some of these new songs at a free performance at the Akron Art Museum on Thursday, August 28, from 7–8 PM. The museum is also free to visit that day. [Please register here.]

The second part of the mission begins a new creative journey, merging my two loves: music and old-growth trees.

Arbor Aria is a new project by Christa Ebert (Uno Lady) that collaborates with the forest. Electronic signals from old-growth trees are recorded and translated into musical scores, with synth and soaring vocals carrying messages from ancient forests.

Experience the premiere of Arbor Aria through a video and sound-art installation on Friday, September 5, from 5–7:30 PM, at Akron Soul Train, 191 S Main St, Akron, OH.

This is my first installation ever and I am really excited to share this new work with you. 

Arbor Aria is an ongoing journey that will eventually become a video album. Please join us as we share the first steps of this adventure.

The project’s goal is to help listeners understand that trees are living, aware beings—and to communicate that old-growth trees are irreplaceable treasures worthy of protection.

 

Here’s a video from the last time I sang at Akron Art Museum (2020, so it was not open to the public).

I’m excited to share with you! See you soon! 

 

Uno Lady Receives the Creative Residency at Bloedel Reserve

Uno Lady Receives the Creative Residency at Bloedel Reserve

I am honored and ecstatic to announce I have been awarded the Creative Residency at  Bloedel Reserve. Next fall I will be spending a month on Bainbridge Island, Washington, recording nature footage, gathering electronic signals from trees, and creating new compositions.

“Bloedel Reserve is a 140-acre wonder of nature, created by the imagination, vision, and a passionate love of the natural world shared by our founders, Prentice and Virginia Bloedel. Working with the rugged geography of the land, they artfully transformed a rough-hewn Northwest forest into a harmonious series of curated gardens, structural features, and distinctive landscapes, with nature as canvas and paint.

 The Creative Residency program provides artists and innovative thinkers with a home on the Bloedel Reserve grounds, designed by noted Northwest architect Jim Cutler, tucked into the woods, away from the trail used by regular Bloedel Reserve visitors. Residents have unlimited access to the Reserve’s 140 acres of sculpted gardens, forests, meadows, and wildlife habitats.” 

I am overwhelmed with joy and gratitude for this opportunity. I plan to visit nearby old growth forests before my trip and record electronic signals from trees and write songs with the woods. Thanks for all your support. If you want to donate to my trip (no pressure) paypal Unoladymusic@gmail.com and venmo at @theunolady

While I am sharing good news…
I have a performance on Friday, November 22,  at Cleveland Uncommon Sounds Project (CUSP), an old church at 1433 E33 Cleveland, Ohio. I have written some pieces special for the space. I’m excited to share with you. Doors at 7:30pm show starts promptly at 8 and I am singing first. Recommended donation of $15 but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
See you there!

New Uno Lady Video- Lake Clark Alaska Improv

This piece was written and recorded in real-time and is a sonic expression of experiencing the incredible environment of Lake Clark. It was composed while sitting on a log on the beach of Lake Clark with a zoom recorder at Chultina Wilderness Lodge. In my yurt studio, delay and a few additional layers were added. 

The video is time-lapse footage I took over the 6-week fellowship and shows the spot I recorded at. 

Thanks for watching. Listen to the album and watch the other videos in the links below. 

 

New Uno Lady Video plus Portland Phoenix Press Writes About Alaska

Here’s a new video for you!  Acappella Instrumental” is on the new album Alaska.  The synth-like sounds are actually psychedelic layers of phased vocals. 

I recorded the footage at Tanalian Falls, in Lake Clark National Park, Alaska. The audio was written and recorded at Chulitna Lodge. A bird sampled throughout the album is Swainson’s Thrush. The males defend their breeding grounds by singing a series of spiraling notes inflected upward, which to me sounds like a flute through phaser pedals.

A heartfelt appreciation to Sam Pfeifle at Portland Phoenix, for this incredible article, “Authentically Manufactured: New Maine releases by Uno Lady & Waxfed are artfully constructed” Thanks for taking the time to get to know my music and share.  Here are some clips from the article.

… “Take Uno Lady, for example, and her newly released “Alaska,” the result of a residency at the off-the-grid solar-powered Chulitna Lodge, a wilderness retreat in Lake Clark National Park & Preserve. Here, Cleveland transplant Christa Ebert has captured field recordings of herself doing things like banging on a log out in the forest, or birds swooping past her tent at night, and remixed them digitally into background atmospheres, over which she layers what sometimes sounds like dozens of her own vocal tracks. Maybe there’s a bit of keyboard once in a while. 

The results are warm and organic, sometimes even catchy, as on “Today’s the Day,” which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Magnetic Fields album. Ebert’s lead vocal is lower register and resonant — “I’ll conjure up some urgency and mend all of the emergencies” — while a chorus of angelic vocals shimmer in the background, accompanied by bugs and birdsong, like Snow White wending her way slowly through the forest. Her vocal range is sorta bonkers. 

Her “Venn Diagram,” too, from the “Osmosis” album three years ago, is a delicious bit of indie pop, and she even covered Tom Petty in her early releases. But there’s always something subversive, something new and interesting in the way she constructs her recordings and releases. Her previous release, “Le Flux,” recorded largely in Switzerland and then edited here in Maine, features vocals that are lyricless, and more found sounds turned into beats. Only possible, really, with today’s digital recording techniques, it still manages to transmit an intimacy that should tickle that desire for authenticity….

Maybe you can’t picture them in the room, but you can understand what they’re feeling, and that’s something no machine will ever authentically do.”

Thanks again, Sam. I appreciate your kind words. 

Breakthrough: Watch the New Music Video

“Breakthrough” is the first track on the album. When composing it, the music came before the lyrics. The percussion is a field recording of a HUGE fallen tree in the woods. The resonance of the decayed wood had some serious natural bass. I set up a zoom recorder, and with a mosquito net on my head, pounded my fist on the tree. You could feel the sound waves through the ground as it echoed through the forest. I’m sure I confused some bears, moose, and grouses.

I apologized.

The psychedelic sound in the intro is a field recording of a wilson snipe, a bird I didn’t know existed until this trip. I was fascinated by their sound. I only heard it at night while trying to sleep. This swirling whooshes circled my yurt and sounded like a natural phaser. I learned it’s called winnowing, and it’s not a bird call but rather the sounds of its feathers as it swoops! The specialized tailfeathers create a whirling buzz as it flies to defend its territories and attract mates. I never saw the bird but I heard what I assume was a dozen+ snipes every night.

Nature.org says, “The hollow winnowing of the tail feathers seemingly echoes off wispy cumulus clouds. The faintness can make you second-guess that you’ve heard anything at all. Researchers have determined that peak winnowing happens when snipe are traveling 25 miles per hour.” (And this guy says they can fly up to 60 mph!)

The video features time-adapted footage from Lake Clark, Alaska. Qizhjeh Vena, also known as Lake Clark, is the ancestral homelands for the Dena’ina Athabascan people. These compositions were greatly influenced by the the area. The album is named Alaska as a tribute to the spatial collaboration. This album is dedicated to the incredible artists at Chulitna Lodge. Thanks for watching. 

I had a melody before I landed on these specific lyrics to sing. I’d written the words before, in a different context, but they only existed on the pages of my songbook–until coming together for this song. 

Being a songwriter is vulnerable. Sometimes trauma turns up in verses. Hypervigilance is a coping mechanism. As a mighty worrier, in a misguided attempt to keep me safe and ready for anything, I unwillingly predict and anticipate unknown dangers. My mind conjures up images of tragic events that will never happen to prepare me for the worst case scenario(s). For example, I have grieved many false deaths, including my own, and vividly envisioned myself experiencing natural disasters, accidents, goofs, and falls, all that which never took place. These distressing thoughts can happen at any time and seem to come out of nowhere. 

In my youth, I would be incredibly upset by these intrusive thoughts; they still irk me, but mindfulness and labeling them has helped me loosen their emotional impact. The lyrics to BREAKTHROUGH label the intrusive thoughts for what they are: 

False future fantasy 
Augmented reality
Scenes that were never seen 
Dishonest daydream
Two-timing treacherous thoughts untrue
Breakthrough

On the bright side, real life is a lot better than my worry brain predicts. 

It’s challenging to write such personal things. When I learned that distorted thoughts are a phenomenon experienced by many people, I felt less isolated. I share in case you need to know you’re not alone. 

Please share with friends you feel could use this message too.  

I hope you like the song and album. It’s my favorite yet. Thanks for reading. Sending you love! 

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https://unolady.com/alaska-the-new-album-is-out-today/