is the creative child of Melissa Achten and Eli Klausner, two composers & multi-instrumentalists based in Los Angeles. Born out of their individual and collaborative artistic practices, Oracle Egg has become a home for experimental practice in the community. As a self-funded and artist-run project, it exists to incubate large-scale experimental performance through creative development residencies and its curated series of performances. Oracle Egg currently operate out of a 3,000 sq. ft. loft in downtown LA's vibrant fashion district.
Melissa Achten
Executive Director/ Co-Founder / Marketing Manager
Melissa Achten is a Los Angeles based harpist focused on immersive musical ritual through experimentation and improvisation. Her performances directly engage with the listener, blurring the relationship between bodies, instruments, and sound to destabilize and thereby reveal hidden meaning. Within carefully conjured atmospheres, she explores the nuances of surrealism, fantasy, mythology, and the occult and what these say about human experience. In her hands, the harp is untangled from convention and remade as a divining tool for channeling work that is diaristic, intimate, and cathartic.
Drawn to interdisciplinary form, Melissa frequently collaborates with performers, composers, and other artists to realize their work and her own. She is also a founding member of the absurdist performance ensemble Playstructure Dreamcast and the other half of harp and cello duo RΓN and harp and piano duo Deathflavorkiss. As a soloist and ensemble member, Melissa has performed and premiered work in New York, Germany, and Denmark.
Eli Klausner
Executive Director/ Co-Founder / Engineer