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Thailand

Saturday 20 December 2025, doors 7 PM, start at 7:30 PM

Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง von Kengchakaj เก่งฉกาจ

Performance|Live multimedia contemporary jazz performance

  • Goethe Saal, Goethe-Institut Thailand, Bangkok

  • 350 THB via Ticketmelon, 450 THB at the door
Tickets

Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง © Kengchakaj

Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง © Kengchakaj

We celebrate the end of the year as we began it on January 6, with Kengchakaj and Nitcha Tothong.
 
Kengchakaj เก่งฉกาจ is a Bangkok-born and New York-based award-winning pianist, improviser, and sound artist. His ongoing project, Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง, is a multimedia performance in collaboration with visual artist Nitcha Tothong ณิชชา with whom he also forms the collective eleklekha.

Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง translates as "paradox"—as an operating logic throughout this project. Kengchakaj composes and improvises with sounds inherited from Southeast Asian ancestral memory: collaborative structures, expressive modes, and knowledge encoded in frequency. But inheritance is never neutral. These sounds arrive charged with political complexity, contested histories, the violence of borders, and erasure.

Through synthesis and soundscape textures drawn from Southeast Asian sound cultures, the performance becomes a space where contradictions don't cancel each other out—they coexist. The political bleeds into the personal. Frustration mirrors healing. Anger disguises itself as its opposite. This is reflection as refraction: his experience split into frequencies that shouldn't harmonise but do.

Tickets available at Ticketmelon.
฿350 advance, ฿450 at the door.

However, we believe cost should never be a barrier to attending. If you require financial assistance, please email us confidentially at hi@elekhlekha.xyz to discuss aid options at least one week prior to the show date. 
  • Kengchakaj – piano, synth, electronics [@kengchakaj]
  • Kan-Ta – Pi Nora, percussion [@kanta_kantaphong]
  • Ham Tanid – guitar, electronics [@hamtanidd]
  • Tae Siriwat – bass [@popotatae]
  • Kobi Abcede – drums [@kobitrenchfoot]
  • Nitcha Fame Tothong – visuals [@nitchafame]
Opening set by: Teerapat Parnmongkol [@griotnous] Along with the Thailand premiere of Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง, Nitcha Tothong and Kengchakaj will offer a Gong (ฆ้อง) Gathering Workshop the day before the concert. More information and application details are available here.

7.00 PM: doors open
7.30 PM: Teerapat Parnmongkol (Opening act; solo)
8.00 PM: Kengchakaj - Lak Lan Yon Yæng ลักลั่น ย้อนแย้ง

About the Artists

Kengchakaj's medium of expression spans acoustic piano, electronics, Southeast Asian retune analog synthesizer, multichannel spatial audio, and live coding—a practice of writing and executing code in real time—utilizing technologies to produce a multisensory live performance. Kengchakaj is a Manhattan School of Music (MM) graduate, a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and a Gold Award Lumen Prize winner. He is a 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, 2024-2025 Lincoln Center Collider Fellow, 2025 Processing Foundation Fellow, 2024 Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellow, and a Y10&11 NEW INC member. His projects have received development funding and support from Lincoln Center, NEW INC, Queens Council on the Arts, City Artist Corps, Rhizome, Processing Foundation, CultureHub, Babycastles, Eyebeam, and the Institute for Electronic Arts.

Kan-Ta has been deeply connected with Nora music and culture from Southern Thailand since childhood. He began studying traditional Nora music at a young age and has performed in ritual and ceremonial contexts ever since. As he grew older, Kan-Ta encountered and explored music from various cultures, embracing diverse influences and integrating them with his own musical roots.

Ham–Tanid Sintaratana is an electro-acoustic artist, guitarist, and composer who links the process of improvisation with Buddhist concepts. His music blends influences ranging from jazz to Thai folk, while incorporating traditional instruments from diverse cultural backgrounds. This fusion is further enhanced by techniques like live looping and computer music, expanding the boundaries of sound in a contemporary context.

Tae Siriwat is an award-winning and in-demand jazz bass player based in Bangkok, Thailand. He has won numerous prestigious awards, including First Prize in Ensemble and Individual Performance at the Thailand Jazz Competition, organized by Silpakorn University. He is currently a part-time instructor at Silpakorn University.

Drummer and producer Kobi “Trenchfoot” Abcede, a.k.a !KOBI, brings propulsive rhythmic prowess and a jazz-tinged harmonic palette to any musical context from LA to New York. A member of the creative music collective Momentum, !KOBI became an in-demand collaborator for artists across NYC area and beyond.

Nitcha Tothong (Fame) is a Thai interdisciplinary media artist, coder, and designer based in Brooklyn. Her work focuses on cross-medium pollination, exploring the intersection of digital and analog media through visuals that challenge perspectives shaped by soft power, colonization, and technology. She is also ½ of elekhlekha.

Teerapat Parnmongkol is a musician and composer, born in Sakon Nakorn, Thailand, playing guitar, oud and sursingar (Dhrupad tradition of the Dagar Vani). Teerapat’s works explore modal systems, improvisation, and resonance. Teerapat's work was presented at Judson Memorial Church (New York, NY), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), The Lab (San Francisco, CA), Karga Kadiköy (Istanbul, TR), and the Peabody Institute (Baltimore, MD).

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