Waterloo Makes Music: Jenna Fournier and Rob Kovacs at Cleveland Rocks: SHOP

Waterloo Makes Music is a free concert series on Waterloo as a gift to all the music lovers in the community, and a celebration of Cleveland’s amazing musical legacy.

Our April Show will feature local musicians Jenna Fournier (Kid Tiggr) and Rob Kovacs on our Cleveland Rocks: SHOP stage, an intimate listening room.

Kid Tigrrr is Jenna Fournier, a singer-songwriter best known for her surreal and whimsical visual art and for fronting Niights, an alternative rock outfit defined by elements of dream-pop and shoegaze. Her solo work maintains the band’s ethereal, atmospheric quality and pop sensibility while taking a more minimal approach to instrumentation. Fournier grew up in Las Vegas before transplanting to Cleveland, OH, where she began playing coffee shops, open mics, and touring regionally until eventually forming Niights. She signed with her first label, 2670 Records (Japan) in 2013 with both a solo EP, Small Reflections, and Niights’ debut album, Whisper, completing an international tour with each release. Niights later signed to Tragic Hero Records (USA) in 2015. Fournier released her second EP as a solo artist, The Little Dreamer, exclusively in Japan in conjunction with a returning tour there in 2017, followed by Niights’ sophomore release of Hellebores, which was supported by tours in the USA and Japan as well. Fournier parted with her label in February of 2020 and is currently recording a full solo debut as an independent self-producing artist while continuing to write with Niights.

https://kidtigrrr.bandcamp.com/

Rob Kovacs is an award-winning composer, pianist, recording artist, music streamer and
college professor. He has gained notoriety for his virtuosic note-for-note piano arrangements of
classic video game soundtracks mainly from the original Nintendo Entertainment System under
the name 88bit. Additionally, Kovacs has composed music for several award-winning short
films, rock bands and most recently the critically acclaimed virtual reality game STRAYLIGHT –
a revolutionary VR platforming experience.
STRAYLIGHT began as a Global Game Jam project five years ago where two game
developers and three filmmakers came together to make a new VR game focusing on
comfortable movement allowing players to experience flying. Kovacs as part of the film team
was brought on to score the game. Only knowing the concept of the game and one simple
graphic, Kovacs was tasked with composing and recording a track in two days that would reflect
the player’s experience of floating and flying in VR space for the first time. Using a vintage
Prophet 5 synth, he created the STRAYLIGHT title track – a slow-developing and ungrounded
synthwave track, that is reflective of the unique experience that is the STRAYLIGHT game.
After the initial prototype was well received the team decided to make this into a full-fledged
game with Kovacs being a member of the dev team and responsible for all the music and sound
effects. “I was really excited when we decided to make this into a full game. I’ve grown up with
video games and video game music and always thought it would be cool to score a video
game.”
Kovacs had recently started a new music project called 88bit where he would take the original
sound files and transcribe and arrange the music for piano, making recordings and giving
concerts throughout the country at gaming and anime conventions. Some major events include
PAX West, GDC Online, The Game Audio Network Guild Awards, MAGFest and others. He’s
performed music by and for legendary video game composers including David Wise (Donkey
Kong Country) and Takashi Tateishi (Mega Man 2), whose respective series have sold millions
of copies worldwide. Kovacs credits his study and knowledge of early video game music for
inspiring his approach to composing new soundtracks for video games today.
“Studying these early video game soundtracks really influenced my writing for STRAYLIGHT. I
got the sense that these early composers were breaking new ground, working with new
technology and creating music for a brand-new medium. They took a lot of risks. I’ve taken that
same approach with this soundtrack. VR is like the Wild West of video games right now. It’s
brand new territory.”
The STRAYLIGHT soundtrack consists of 10 progressive synthwave tracks. They feature long-
developing melodies that require multiple listens, ideal for songs that may be looping multiple
times. Harmonically Kovacs makes heavy use of mode mixture and progressions that never
quite feel settled – a feeling that is mirrored by gameplay where there is no ground.
“I’ve never written music like this before. And I probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for this
game. The team basically trusted me and gave me free rein to compose whatever I wanted. I
used this opportunity to try new compositional ideas and techniques. I feel I’ve created
something very unique and something that people will want to keep coming back to whether
they play the game or not.”
Kovacs released his first solo record, Let Go, in 2021- an introspective indie-rock record
chronicling an intense and poignant romance – and was featured in publications including
AmericanSongwriter.com and Glide Magazine. In 2022 under the 88bit moniker, Kovacs

collaborated with lo-fi producer, Save Point, to release Video Game LoFi: Super Mario 64 – a
collaborative album featuring lo-fi, jazz-adjacent arrangements of music from Super Mario 64.
In 2017, Kovacs started recording and performing as 88bit, gaining attention as one of the only
pianists in the world to record and publicly perform some of these early game soundtracks at a
professional level. He has played at major events including the Mensa National Gathering,
NeoSonic Fest, Classic Game Fest, VGM CON and many others.
He has been interviewed by Level with Emily Reese, gameinformer.com,
clevelandclassical.com NPR’s “Sound of Applause” (WCPN Cleveland), NPR’s “Shuffle” (WKSU
Kent), NPR’s ReSpawn Podcast and others.
Kovacs also performed with the Distant Worlds Final Fantasy orchestra and has collaborated
with other artists including Mega Ran, Insaneintherainmusic, Save Point, 8-Bit Music Theory,
EyeQ, The Icarus Kid, and many others. He is internationally recognized as the first person to
perform a solo version of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase by playing both piano parts on two pianos
simultaneously. Kovacs is a member of the Recording Academy and a professor of composition
and songwriting at Baldwin Wallace University.

https://www.robkovacsmusic.com