Education

Welcome to The Cise Pavilion: KDC Guild’s Debut Project is an Invitation

One May 2020 morning, CEO Kristopher “KC” Malone called his friend – and now partner -- David Brescia-Weiler to pitch an album concept based on a dream he’d had the night before. Though neither had any experience making an album, KC knew that if anyone could help bring his idea to life, it was David. The two met as teens in Woodrow Wilson High School’s theater program. David, 29, stayed in the spotlight post-graduation.

“P“Pre-pandemic I performed every week at the Washington Improv Theater for seven years. During Covid I was feeling an empty space where I used to be able to express myself creatively. To just do weird experiments, create with other people, collaborate. So of course, I was excited to have a creative project to work on. ”

T The dream placed KC at a carnival. As he moved through the rides and games, he saw people he knew, but none of them recognized him. When he awoke, he didn’t know what it meant just yet, but he knew it had the makings of a cinematic project. He tapped David as the creative director to help him parse out the narrative, and together they peeled back layers of the dream to arrive at a concept they named Cise Pavilion.

IfIf you’re a DMV native old enough to rent a car, you already know the meaning of “cise” (also written as “sice”). But for the transplants and the kids: “cise” is a slang term meaning to hype something up, usually to the point of taking it too far. Here, KC and David invoke the term as a regionally specific form of clout. The album explores clout as a hell of a drug, following a protagonist through a trippy carnival that takes place in the Cise Pavilion.

“ “We wanted to show this carnival as a metaphor for life and for all the clout chasing that’s going on in the world. When it’s in your favor, you can be cised up to the point where you feel on top of the world and when you’re not, you can feel meaningless. It’s almost like fool’s gold... [Read the full article online at www.wibridgedc.com]