Emily Sage Avery
info [at] emilysagemusic [dot] com

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Emily Sage Avery is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores listening as creative, relational, and embodied. Her practice moves through sound, sculpture, poetry, and installation— exploring listening as a way of relating to place, self, and each other.

Many of her works begin with small gestures such as holding hands, lying down, gathering, reading, walking, and noticing. Her projects often exist somewhere between composition and ecology, tending toward ongoing questions.

At the center of her practice is a desire to remain attentive — to beauty, to resonance, to care, and to the possibility that listening itself can be a creative and communal act.

Selected Exhibitions
SoundScene Fest, Group Exhibit, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institute, May 2026
Charlotte International Art Festival, Festival, September - October 2025
Opposites Attract, Group Exhibit, Cain Center for the Arts, September - November 2025
Sovereign, Group Exhibit, McColl Center in North Carolina, March - April 2025
Arise O Artist, Solo Exhibit, The Frame in North Carolina, February 2025
Luminous Lane, Group Exhibit, Luminous Lane in North Carolina, 2024 - present

Selected Awards
2025 Blumenthal Fellowship
2025 ASC Emerging Creator Fellowship
2022 Spotify Top Global Jazz
2021 Venice Film Shorts Award Winner for Best Cinematography - Cold Moon by the Sea
2021 IMVA Award Winner for Main Category Best Music Video - Cold Moon by the Sea
2021 Charlotte Film Festival Award Winner for Best Narrative Short Film - Cold Moon by the Sea
2019 Critic’s Pick Best in the Nest Award Winner for Best Singer/Songwriter - Emily Sage

Notable Collections
2025 Bureau for Listening’s Anthology For Listening II, Poet and Composer - Sounds of Serenity Garden
2024 Lockers Volume I by Darren King (DK the Drummer), Songwriter and Vocalist - All My Love
2024 Home Movies Music Sessions, Songwriter and Vocalist - Ep. 04
2023 Best Vocal Jazz of 2022, Artist and Publisher - Spotify - Lumiére
2023 Direct-To-Vinyl Live Session with Leesta Vall Sound Recordings
2021 Corners of My Room by Ethan Nathaniel, Songwriter and Vocalist - Break My Heart
2019 Home by Cyanca, Songwriter - Home

Selected Performances
April 18, 2026 Derita Design, Derita, NC
August 16, 2025 with Bureau for Listening at Struer Library, Struer, Denmark
November 4, 2023 Love Songs and Lullabies Tour, Charlotte, NC
October 30, 2023 opening for Grace Weber at Snug Harbor, Charlotte, NC
October 15, 2023 Love Songs and Lullabies Tour, Springfield, MO
October 14, 2023 Love Songs and Lullabies Tour, Memphis, TN
October 12, 2023 Love Songs and Lullabies Tour, East Memphis, TN
September 21, 2023 Sofar Sounds, Charlotte, NC
April 8, 2023 Pianodrome, Charlotte, NC
February 16, 2023 opening for Ben Sollee and Scott Mulvahill at Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotte, NC
January 27, 2023 Sofar Sounds, Raleigh, NC
October 26, 2022 Sofar Sounds, Charlotte, NC
August 26, 2022 Sofar Sounds, Austin TX
August 26, 2022 DIY Musician Conference by CD Baby, Austin TX
October 29, 2021 Mémoire x Emily Sage, Covet Atelier, Charlotte, NC
June 30, 2021 Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotte, NC

Education
2012-2016 BA in Songwriting Belmont University, Nashville, TN

Selected Works
2026 A Matter of Freedom (Poetry Collection), Self-Published Online, Website
Poet
A Matter of Freedom is a collection of black out poetry. Every poem is one-of-a-kind, a combination of poetic archeology and word-weaving, uncovering proverbs within the limitations of a single page. This collection engages in a social commentary infused with political, spiritual, and religious conversations.

2025 Together, CIAF by Blumenthal, North Carolina
Project Lead, Installation Artist, Composer, & Producer
Together is an interactive sound sculpture that uses technology to transform human touch into harmony. When participants join hands to bridge two larger-than-life figures, a chorus of voices can be heard. Together is both a celebration and conviction to togetherness. It is the embodiment of hope for the future, provoking thought and conversation around unity, diversity, and what it means to be human together.

2025 The Gantry at LC-39, NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Vocalist
The Gantry at LC-39 is an ongoing, immersive installation at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island, Florida. The installation explores the relationship between nature and technology through space exploration simulations. The soundscape for this experience was composed and recorded by Jason Hausman lead composer at Hot Sake, music and sound design studio, with vocalizations by Emily Sage Avery.

2025 Nurture Sounds, Bureau for Listening, Assistens Kirkegård, Copenhagen, Denmark
Soundscape Artist, Composer, and Producer
Nurture Sounds is a multi-lingual, international, continually evolving project that is both an active collection and exploration of the impact of acoustic ecologies in the process of becoming. The first iteration of Nurture Sounds was presented with the Bureau for Listening in Copenhagen, Denmark. This soundscape consists of maternal sounds: recordings of mothers whispering prayers and messages to their children, hushing sounds, deep breathing, and lullabies. Nurture Sounds is an open ended project that is continually being added to by mothers from around the world in their native tongue, all adding to this tapestry of voices that create Nurture Sounds.

2025 Arise O Artist, The Frame, North Carolina
Project Lead, Installation Artist, Composer, & Producer
Arise O Artist is an exhibition that explores slowness, deep listening, and interaction with nature through word and sound. This exhibit is a call to return to presence, to embrace the same courage, tenacity, and authenticity that emanates from the natural world.

2025 Soundscape for Golden Threads, Rail Trail Charlotte, North Carolina
Soundscape Artist, Composer, and Producer
Golden Threads is an art installation by multidisciplinary artist Meredith Connelly that explores South End Charlotte’s journey from an industrial and textile community to a center for art, design, and technology. The installation features multiple sculptures that line the Rail Trail, a popular walking path in Charlotte’s South End. The soundscape is a 15 minute audio piece combining sound effects and compositions that reflect the sculptural elements of Connelly’s installation.

2025 The Garden She Planted for Sovereign, McColl Center, North Carolina
Composer & Producer
The Garden She Planted is a musical composition and soundscape that is a celebration of women and the space that women create for self, for others, space to be creative, space to be heard, space to be loved, space to mourn, etc. The Garden She Planted is a part of Sovereign, a show curated by Meredith Connelly at the McColl Center Spring 2025.

2025 Talking Flowers for Arise O Artist, The Frame, Charlotte, NC
Sound and Installation Artist
Talking Flowers is an interactive sound art installation that explores the strength of women— soft yet unyielding, beautiful yet deeply transformative, and an incredible capacity for hope. This work honors generational investment in healing and growth, the enduring labor of love, the consistency of truth spoken in prayers and encouragement, and the ways the women before me nurtured a corner of light in this world, not just for themselves, but generations to come.

2025 Sounds of Serenity Garden, Anthology for Listening by Bureau for Listening, Denmark
Soundscape Artist, Composer, and Producer
Bureau for Listening is an art group based in Copenhagen, Denmark that focuses on fostering, engaging with, and care for listening. Anthology for Listening Vol. II, is a transdisciplinary and experimental collection of critical and artistic engagements with listening as both a practice and a way of being. This second volume extends an invitation to engage deeply with the transformative, creative, and political dimensions of listening across diverse mediums and perspectives. Anthology for Listening Vol. II features over 60 artists and thinkers from around the globe offering diverse perspectives on the concept of listening. This printed anthology by Bureau for Listening features Emily Sage’s Soundscape and Musical Installation, Sounds of Serenity Garden, which was featured in Charlotte SHOUT! 2023.

2025 Arise O Artist (Poetry Collection), The Frame, North Carolina
Poet
Arise O Artist is thoughtfully provocative in its depth and tone. The final collection features ten individual poems with their own meanings, while reading them together from one end to the other tells its own story, in one long-form poem. This collection engages the question of responsibility an artist has to their community and their respective spheres of influence, with an approach of conviction and grace, gravity and softness.

2024 Let Your Heart Be Light featured in Arise O Artist, The Frame, Charlotte, NC
Sound and Installation Artist
Let Your Heart Be Light is a touch-triggered painting that brings art, music, and tech together in a quietly rebellious way, creating a piece that must be touched to be fully understood. It invites interaction and participation.

2024 Luminous Lane Soundtrack (permanent Public Art Installation), CLT SHOUT!, North Carolina
Composer, Producer, & Curator
Luminous Lane is a dark alley turned public art collection of brightly colored murals in downtown Charlotte. Luminous Lane was curated by local muralist, Sydney Duarte. The alleyway features over 40 artists local, national, and international, with themes of light, hope, and the transforming nature of love. The soundscape was curated by Emily Sage. The soundscape speaks to the themes highlighted throughout the alleyway and is designed to enhance the connection between viewer and artist, aiming to make the viewer feel a part of the art and the art a part of the viewer as they walk through the space. Title Track, “Luminous Lane,” was composed and produced by Emily Sage with sounds from the alleyway while it was being converted.

2023 Pilgrimage (Public Art Installation), CIAF, North Carolina
Sound Design
Pilgrimage is an interactive public art installation by Laurie Smithwick. This work is an invitation to ponder the excitement and transformational moments of possibility that present themselves, often unknowingly, throughout our lives. Sound design by Emily Sage.

2023 Sky of Bubbles (Public Art Installation), CIAF, North Carolina
Vocalist, Writer
Sky of Bubbled is a public art installation by Atelier Sisu, a Sydney based design practice focusing on the intersection of art and architecture. Music by Jason Hausman, vocals written and performed by Emily Sage.

2023 The Sounds of Serenity Garden (Art Documentary), Virtual
Composer & Producer
This artful documentary is about the installation “Sound of Serenity Garden.” The score was composed, produced, and mixed by Emily Sage. Produced by Chris Lomartire, DP by Dillon Deaton, and Edited by Jacob McCall.

2023 The Sounds of Serenity Garden (Public Art Installation), CLT SHOUT!, North Carolina
Project Lead, Composer & Producer
The Sounds of Serenity Garden is a musical art installation created to shine a light on the pockets of green that exist in the city of Charlotte, NC. It is an invitation to encounter nature within city limits, it's a call to seek pockets of serenity and presence within the hustle and bustle of our busy lives. It's a reminder that there is beauty and art everywhere, if we only take the time to look. The soundtrack played aloud on speakers throughout the park and was a QR Code to scan and listen on headphones for a more intimate listening experience.

2022 Music for Man (Public Art Installation), CLT Arts Fest, North Carolina
Vocals
Man by Amanda Parer is an installation inspired by Auguste Rodin’s 1880 famous bronze sculpture, The Thinker. In contrast to Rodin’s representation of the ideal man, Parer’s Man is a little bewildered and bloated. He is reflecting on the over-indulgences and effect of contemporary society’s unrealistic and ultimately detrimental expectations on the world. Music commissioned by Blumenthal Arts for CLT Arts fest, soundtrack composed and produced by Jason Hausman, piano by Derel Monteith, vocals by Emily Sage.