Long Play 2025

John Cage Sonatas and Interludes, performed by Adam Tendler 

GRAMMY®-nominated pianist Adam Tendler is a recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the Yvar Mikhashoff Prize, and is considered “currently the hottest pianist on the American contemporary classical scene” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), “relentlessly adventurous” (Washington Post), a “remarkable and insightful musician” (LA Times), and an “intrepid… maverick pianist” (The New Yorker). A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, at 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty United States as part of a grassroots recital tour called America 88×50, and has gone on to become one of today’s most recognized and celebrated performers in classical-contemporary music, appearing with the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, NJ Symphony, and on the main-stages of Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Sydney Opera House, Roy Thomson Hall, BAM, and leading series and stages nationwide. Tendler’s recent albums include Inheritances, 16 new works commissioned using the entire inheritance left to him by his father, Wild Up’s Grammy-nominated Julius Eastman album, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?, as well as solo albums of music by Robert Palmer and Franz Liszt. Adam has published two books, was the 2024 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn’s Green-wood Cemetery, is a Yamaha Artist, and serves on the piano faculty of NYU.

Adam’s website

photo by Steven Pisano

Max Richter with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble performing The Blue Notebooks and In A Landscape*

The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) has risen to the highest ranks of American new music through a mix of meticulous musicianship, artistic vision, engaging collaborations, and unwavering standards in every regard. The membership of the amorphous collective includes some of the brightest stars in the field. NPR calls them “contemporary music dynamos,” and Strings reports, “ACME’s absorbing playing pulsed with warm energy. . . Shared glances and inhales triggered transitions in a flow so seamless it seemed learned in a Jedi temple.” ACME was honored by ASCAP during its 10th anniversary season in 2015 for the “virtuosity, passion, and commitment with which it performs and champions American composers.”

ACME’s Website

Photo by Mark Shelby Perry

*available with a Long Play MAX PASS only*

Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Pete Townshend, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, & Special Guests

Long Play presents a 90th birthday spotlight-celebration of Terry Riley with guitar legend Pete Townshend performing the original ‘free fall solo version’ of his signature tribute Baba O’Riley, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiering a new version of Riley’s iconic and inspirational A Rainbow in Curved Air, arranged by Gyan Riley, plus Riley’s minimalist classic In C performed by an All-Star cast including Pete Townshend and special guests.

Vicky Chow, piano

David Cossin, percussion

Arlen Hlusko, cello

Mark Stewart, electric guitar

Ken Thomson, clarinets

Bang on a Can All-Stars website

BarTog and Cecilia Lopez are two of the most radical and unique voices coming from the Buenos Aires improvisation scene. The combination of Togander’s work with voice and turntable and Lopez’s idiosyncratic approach to analogue electronics, processing and instrument building gives the duo a distinct and visionary sound. Both improvisors have developed very different musical vocabularies that combine in a fluent dialogue oscillating between dark tones, hectic vocalizations, trashy beats and humorous hints that will very likely surprise the audience.

Cecilia Lopez: synthesizers

BarTog: turntables and voice

BarTog’s website

Cecilia’s website

photo by Christopher Pelham

David Lang Darker, performed by Ensemble Signal, with film by Bill Morrison 

Bill Morrison has premiered films at the New York, Rotterdam, Sundance, and Venice film festivals, and mulitmedia work at major performance venues around the globe such as BAM, the Barbican, Carnegie, and Walt Disney Concert Hall. His films typically source rare archival footage in which long-forgotten, and sometimes deteriorated, imagery is reframed as part of a collective mythology. DECASIA (2002) was the first film of the 21st century to be selected to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME (2017) was named to multiple critics’ lists of the best films of the decade (2010s).  His work has been recognized with the Alpert Award, Creative Capital,  the Foundation for Contemporary Art, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Bill’s website

BlackBox Ensemble presents Embodying Eastman: Speculative Listening with Isaac Jean-François

The BlackBox Ensemble is a collective of contemporary music performers based in New York City dedicated to exploring the wide-ranging world of the music of our time.

BlackBox Ensemble’s website

Buke and Gase is the experimental project of Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer. Their 2023 concert film and documentary, streaming for free on Tubi and Prime Video, offers an inside look at their unconventional & creative journey. Soon after releasing their debut EP in 2008, the duo became an “indie rock” obsession shared by The National & beloved cult podcast Radiolab. Since then they’ve released four albums and three more EPs; taped one of the earliest episodes of NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series; toured on four continents (North America, Australia, Asia & Europe/UK); and served as hand-picked collaborators or support acts for a who’s who of music icons: Laurie Anderson & Lou Reed, Shellac, Battles, Swans, Deerhoof, Owen Pallett, So Percussion and Mike Patton’s metal supergroup Tomahawk among others.

their website

Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music, and has used computers in live performance since 1986. He has been hailed by the Village Voice as “the king of sampling.” and “one of the best composers living in (the USA) today.”. RELIX has written that “Stone makes music that can hit your ear holes like a DMT flash.” He was born in California and now divides his time between LA and Japan. He studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. His works have been performed in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the Near East. In addition to his schedule of performance, composition and touring, he is the emeritus professor in the Department of Media Engineering at Chukyo University in Japan.

Carl’s website

Photo by Tomohiro Ueshiba

Akaihirume is a Japanese singer whose ear is always tuned to the world’s sounds, which she keeps as material in her shell. As both her own compositions and improvisations using her wide range of vocalizations, she has worked on her solo performances and collaborations with artists of various styles.

Akaihirume’s website

We wrote “Accept When” between 2022 and 2023, after a long, beautiful period improvising together intimately in the safety of a friend’s practice space. Our friendship, the quality of attention that colored the light of that and all our other practice spaces, became the basis for our activity and growth as songwriters and our relationship as improvisers. Friendship, how we relate to each other, is our nucleus: the central and essential part of our movement; the positively charged central core of our atom.

A nucleus is supposed to be an especially essential form in eukaryotic cells. Their nuclei are surrounded by a membrane, which in that world permits them to be said to have “true nuclei.” Even their smallest parts, their organelles (incidentally also the name of Caroline’s keyboard heard throughout the record), are held by that membrane. The deepening of our musical friendship, the affordance of space we give to the possibility of synchronicity, the reminders we write of the preciousness of our existence – all of this we put into these songs for you, to help us all accept these miracles and metaphors, in our lifeboats.

Caroline’s website

Wendy’s website

photo by Adi Meyerson

Lorelei Ensemble plays Christopher Cerrone’s Beaufort Scales

Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984, New York) is internationally acclaimed for his compositions. His work is characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Cerrone’s music balances lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling details, dramatic impact and interiority. His multi-GRAMMY-nominated compositions are utterly compelling and uniquely his own.

Chris’s website

STRING NOISE plays Christian Wolff’s solo and duo violin pieces

Christian Wolff was born in Nice, France, to the German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S. in 1941, they helped to found Pantheon Books with other European intellectuals who had fled Europe during the rise of fascism. The Wolffs published a series of notable English translations of European literature, mostly, as well as an edition of the I Ching that came to greatly impress John Cage after Wolff had given him a copy.

David Lang Darker, performed by Ensemble Signal, with film by Bill Morrison 

David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls.

David’s Website

photo credit: Peter Serling

emptyset is a London/Berlin based production project formed in 2005 by James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas.

The project examines the material properties of sound and its correspondence with architecture, performance and physical modes of production. Their recorded output includes the releases Borders and Skin for Thrill Jockey in 2017, Recur and Collapsed for raster-noton, Signal a commissioned performance working with ionospheric propagation and Medium an expanded live recording in Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire.

Their latest album, ash, out October 20, 2023, marks the 50th release for Ginzburg’s Subtext Recordings and a return to the project’s origins in Bristol. Emptyset have produced installations for Spike Island, Tate Britain and the Architecture Foundation and presented live performances with CTM/Transmediale, Unsound, Ruhrtriennale, Kunsthalle Zurich and Sonic Acts amongst other notable events and venues.

emptyset’s website

Kate Moore Rose of roses, flower of flowers (world premiere) + selected works, performed by Ensemble Offspring

Ensemble Offspring plays Iannis Xenakis   

Ensemble Offspring is Australia’s leading new music group, standing at the forefront of musical innovation for 30 years. Led by renowned percussionist Claire Edwardes OAM, the ensemble unites the country’s most fearless and virtuosic instrumentalists. Together, they champion living and marginalised voices including First Nations and female artists, creating “visceral, joyous music” (Sydney Morning Herald) through kaleidoscopically varied performances that blaze a trail for Australian music.

Claire Edwardes (Artistic Director, percussion)

Lamorna Nightingale (flutes)

Jason Noble (clarinet, bass clarinet)

Vèronique Serret (violin)

+ 2 local guest artists

Ensemble Offspring’s website

Kate Moore Rose of roses, flower of flowers (world premiere) + selected works, performed by Ensemble Offspring

Rose of roses, flower of flowers (world premiere) is inspired by the ‘cantigas de Santa Maria’ a collection of 13th century songs commissioned by Alfonso X, it is a modern day cantiga. Intoxicated by the aroma of the rose, the nightingale, pierced with a thorn, sings itself to death.

Kate Moore – Fern (quartet + backing track) 12′

Kate Moore – Blackbird Song (trio) 9’30

Kate Moore – Synaesthesia Suite (violin solo + backing track) 19′

Kate Moore – Joyful Melodies (vibraphone solo) 13′

Kate Moore – Rose of roses, flower of flowers (violin, flute, clarinet, percussion + backing track) 5’ WORLD  PREMIERE

Ensemble Offspring plays Iannis Xenakis

mikka/mikka S 9′

Charisma 4’

Rebonds b/a 13’30

Claude Vivier – Piece for violin and clarinet 7’

Felicity Wilcox – People of this Place 6’30

Brenda Gifford – Mungala 5’30

Julia Wolfe Cruel Sister is performed by Ensemble Signal

David Lang Darker, performed by Ensemble Signal, with film by Bill Morrison 

Ensemble Signal is a NY-based ensemble dedicated to offering the broadest possible audience access to a diverse range of contemporary works through performance, commissioning, recording, and education. Since its debut in 2008, Signal has performed over 350 concerts, premiered numerous works, and co-produced ten recordings.

Signal Ensemble’s website

photo by Stephanie Berger

Fred Frith (solo guitar) is a pioneer of the extended electric guitar. He learned to compose in Henry Cow, developed his song-writing skills in Art Bears, explored his multi-instrumentalism in Skeleton Crew, rocked the house with Massacre and is still doing all of those things, having been in one band or another continuously since 1964! Fred composes extensively for film and dance, and his work is also performed by contemporary and baroque ensembles, string quartets, chamber orchestras, and a whole range of groups and artists in the ever-expanding field of semi-popular music.

Fred’s website

photo by Peter Gannushkin

Drummer and composer Tomas Fujiwara convenes a first time trio with cellist Tomeka Reid and saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

Tomas’ website

Tomas’ photo by Ernest Stuart

Immanuel’s website

Tomeka’s website

Tomeka’s photo by Tony Smith

Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Pete Townshend, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, & Special Guests

Gyan Riley is a guitarist and composer living in New York City and extensively touring internationally both as a soloist and with artists such as Julian Lage, Bill Frisell, Terry Riley, and Grammy-winning singer Arooj Aftab. Gyan has six of his own CD titles and dozens of collaborative recordings. Recently he was featured as a performer and composer for two acclaimed PBS documentary series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick: Hemingway, and The U.S. and the Holocaust.

“Beautiful and enigmatic”…”an alluringly intimate vibe created from the first note.” -The New York Times –

Gyan Riley’s website

photo credit: Dmitrij Matvejev

For over 25 years, the Minneapolis based collective, Happy Apple, has delivered its own enigmatic vision of jazz and improvised music to an adoring cognoscenti of listeners. Though they’ve found favor from the jazz community at large, the trio of saxophonist Michael Lewis, bassist Erik Fratzke, and drummer Dave King remains a band of outsiders, three independent personalities with eclectic tastes and styles providing music with an obtuse Midwestern charm.

Happy Apple’s website

Henry Threadgill’s Listen Ship (World Premiere)

Long Play presents the world premiere of Henry Threadgill’s Listen Ship featuring pianists Maya Keren and Rahul Carlberg, guitarists Brandon Ross, Bill Frisell, Gregg Belisle-Chi, Miles Okazaki, Stomu Takeishi, and Henry Threadgill, conductor.

Henry Threadgill’s Listen Ship

Maya Keren – Piano

Rahul Carlberg – Piano

Brandon Ross – Soprano Guitar

Bill Frisell – Acoustic Guitar

Gregg Belisle-Chi – Acoustic Guitar

Miles Okazaki – Acoustic Guitar

Stomu Takeishi – Bass Guitar

Jerome Harris – Bass Guitar

Henry Threadgill – Conductor

Threadgill’s website

Highsmith + is Ikue Mori (electronics) Craig Taborn (piano) Tomeka Reid (cello). Their trio joins the lineup for Long Play 2025.

Ikue’s website

Craig’s website

Tomeka’s website

Ensemble Offspring plays Iannis Xenakis

Iannis Xenakis was born May 29, 1922, in Romania and died February 4, 2001, in Paris, France. He was a composer, architect, and mathematician who originated musique stochastique, music composed with the aid of electronic computers and based upon mathematical probability systems.

Learn more about Iannis Xenakis here.

Ensemble Offspring plays Iannis Xenakis

mikka/mikka S 9′

Charisma 4’

Rebonds b/a 13’30

Claude Vivier – Piece for violin and clarinet 7’

Felicity Wilcox – People of this Place 6’30

Brenda Gifford – Mungala 5’30

BlackBox Ensemble presents Embodying Eastman: Speculative Listening with Isaac Jean-François

Isaac Jean-François is a doctoral candidate studying at Yale University in the Departments of African-American Studies and American Studies. Jean-François’s research interests include black studies, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and queer studies. His research on composer and performer Julius Eastman is featured in an issue of Current Musicology in an essay titled, “Julius Eastman: The Sonority of Blackness Otherwise” (July 2020).

Photo by Aiden Magarian and Anne-Sophie Bine

JJJJJerome Ellis is a stuttering, Afro-Caribbean composer, poet, and performer. His works are invitations to healing, transcendence, communion, and deep listening. Through an interdisciplinary practice that focuses on oral storytelling, improvisation, and the interrelations between speech, silence, disability, and religion, he’s collaborated with choreographers, rappers, playwrights, booksellers, typographers, podcasters, toddlers, and filmmakers. Mr. Ellis’ work has been presented or developed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Lincoln Center, MASS MoCA, and WKCR. He is a writer in residence at Lincoln Center Theater. Born in Connecticut to a Jamaican mother and a Grenadian father, he was raised in Virginia Beach, VA.

As a composer Ellis was awarded a 2015 Fulbright Fellowship to research traditional samba performance and write new music in Salvador, Brazil. There he performed with local musicians at Teatro Gamboa Nova and Feminaria Musical at the Universidade Federal da Bahia. Recent sound design/composing credits include Help (The Shed), Passage (Soho Repertory Theatre), the Radical Craft Design Salon (TED Conferences), and LAB RAT by A$AP Rocky (Sotheby’s/YouTube). From 2008 to 2011, Ellis was resident composer and saxophonist with pianist Trudy Silver at 5C Cafe and Cultural Center in New York City. As a jazz saxophonist, he has performed with Joseph Daley, Aaron Scott, and Shayna Dulberger. Ellis earned his B.A. in music theory and ethnomusicology from Columbia University, studying ear training and counterpoint with pianist and composer Ramin Arjomand.

His diverse body of work includes: contemplative soundscapes using saxophone, flute, dulcimer, electronics, and vocals; scores for plays and podcasts; albums combining spoken word with ambient and jazz textures; theatrical explorations involving live music and storytelling; and music-video-poems that seek to transfigure historical archives.

JJJJJerome’s website

photo by Cameron Kelly Mcleod

John Cage Sonatas and Interludes, performed by Adam Tendler 

John Cage was an American avant-garde composer whose inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced mid-20th-century music.

John’s Website

Julia Wolfe Cruel Sister, performed by Ensemble Signal

Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.

Julie’s Website

photo by Peter Serling

BlackBox Ensemble presents Embodying Eastman: Speculative Listening with Isaac Jean-François

Julius Eastman (October 27, 1940 – May 28, 1990) was an American composer, pianist, vocalist, performance artist, and conductor. He was among the first composers to combine the processes of some minimalist music with other methods of extending and modifying his music as in some experimental music. He thus created what he called “organic music”. In compositions like Stay On It (1973), his melodic motifs were not unlike the catchy refrains of then pop music.

Kate Moore Rose of roses, flower of flowers (world premiere) + selected works, performed by Ensemble Offspring

Kate Moore is an internationally acclaimed composer. Her works are performed by Asko|Schönberg, Bang on a Can, Icebreker, Slagwerk Den Haag, Ensemble Offspring, the Australian String Quartet, The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Groot Omroepkoor, among others. Rose of roses, flower of flowers (world premiere) is inspired by the ‘cantigas de Santa Maria’ a collection of 13th century songs commissioned by Alfonso X, it is a modern day cantiga. Intoxicated by the aroma of the rose, the nightingale, pierced with a thorn, sings itself to death.

Kate Moore – Fern (quartet + backing track) 12′

Kate Moore – Blackbird Song (trio) 9’30

Kate Moore – Synaesthesia Suite (violin solo + backing track) 19′

Kate Moore – Joyful Melodies (vibraphone solo) 13′

Kate Moore – Rose of roses, flower of flowers (violin, flute, clarinet, percussion + backing track) 5’ WORLD  PREMIERE

Kate’s website

Lorelei Ensemble plays Christopher Cerrone’s Beaufort Scales

Heralded for its “full-bodied and radiant sound” (The New York Times), the GRAMMY®-nominated Lorelei Ensemble is recognized for bold and inventive programs that champion the extraordinary flexibility and virtuosity of the human voice. Led by founder and artistic director Beth Willer, Lorelei has established an inspiring mission, curating culturally-relevant and artistically audacious programs that challenge artists’ and audiences’ expectations. Lorelei collaborates with leading composers, having commissioned more than 70 new works that expand and deepen the repertoire of sounds, timbres, words, and stories that women use to reflect and challenge our world. This new repertoire for women’s and treble voices demands fierce flexibility and openness from each artist and listener, allowing unparalleled music making that is born from the unique position of power and cultural influence that women hold.

Lorelei’s website

photo by Ebru Yildiz

Sophia Jani Six Pieces for Solo Violin, performed by Maiani da Silva 

Violinist Maiani da Silva is a sought-after soloist, chamber musician, educator, and collaborator in contemporary music and beyond. Maiani is a member of the four-time Grammy-winning sextet Eighth Blackbird, founder of Brouhaha, an interdisciplinary project connecting anthropology and climate change, and Lecturer at Yale University. She has had the pleasure of working with/premiering works by Joan Tower, Viet Cuong, Ted Hearne, Julianna Barwick, Kelley Polar, and the recently GRAMMY®-nominated (2025) David Lang, whose work composition as explanation was recorded by Maiani and her sextet Eighth Blackbird.

Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Bill Frisell (guitar) perform a tribute to jazz guitar legend Johnny Smith.

Mary’s website

Bill’s website

photo by Monica Frisell

Max Richter with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble performing The Blue Notebooks and In A Landscape*

Max Richter is one of the most influential composers of his generation. His fusion of classical technique and electronic technology, heard across genre-defining solo albums and countless scores for film, dance, art and fashion, has won him legions of fans around the world and blazed a trail for a generation of musicians.

Max’s website

*available with a Long Play MAX PASS only

Meara O’Reilly Hockets for Two Voices performed by Mingjia Chen + Linnea Sablosky 

Meara O’Reilly is a composer and artist, focusing on perception and new musical interfaces. Her Hockets for Two Voices album was released on Cantaloupe in 2019. It was named in several year-end best of lists, including Art Forum, Bandcamp, and Second Inversion. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo reviewed the album for Talkhouse, saying it “sends you, moves you, destroys you with beauty”.

Meara’s website

Michael Gordon Material, performed by Yarn/Wire

Michael Gordon’s music merges subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power embodying, in the words of The New Yorker‘s Alex Ross, “the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism.”

Michael’s website

Meara O’Reilly Hockets For Two Voices performed by Mingjia Chen + Linnea Sablosky

beijing-birthed, toronto/LA-dwelling musician—vocalist, composer, songwriter, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, teacher, curator—mingjia (MING-juh) performs in solo & collaborative projects across many genres and likes to roll around in grass even though she is allergic. recognized for her improvisational & stylistic versatility as a vocalist & her fresh sound as a composer, she has performed at various venues and festivals across canada, china & the united states, & has produced four releases as a band leader.

mingjia’s website

Photo of Mingjia by erika poh & mingjia chen

Linnea Sablosky is an emphatic musician with a passion for close harmony and intricate rhythms. Born and raised in the Bay Area, she studied Balkan singing and West African drumming from a young age and has since developed fluency in musics from Georgia, Eastern Europe, and Indonesia. In 2013 she toured with Northern Harmony, singing and teaching workshops in England, North America, and Colombia. She is a member of several ensembles in Los Angeles including Kidi Band and a Georgian Polyphony sextet which she directs. Linnea holds a BFA in World Music Performance from California Institute of the Arts.

Linnea’s website

Esther Quansah (guitars, vocals) and Becky Foinchas (keys, vocals) met in an elementary school chorus class in the ghostly woodlands of Woodbridge, Virginia. The daughters of African immigrants (Quansah from Cote D’Ivoire and Foinchas from Cameroon), they soaked up influences as far-flung and varied as choral symphonies, African wedding music, and math rock, distilling them through a unique lens. The songwriting duo of Foinchas and Quansah has always had a knack for subverting expectations through sound, investigating themes of meditation, esotericism, and surrealism in daily life to address existential questions about the innermost self. Woven within the fibers of the music is a deeply spiritual aesthetic that challenges sonic reality through a formless usage of their surroundings.

narcotix band’s website

Nico Muhly The Street, performed by Stef Van Vynckt

Nico Muhly, born in 1981, is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, chamber music and sacred music. He’s received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera: Two Boys (2011), and Marnie (2018); Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Tallis Scholars, and King’s College, Cambridge, among others. He is a collaborative partner at the San Francisco Symphony and has been featured at the Barbican and the Philharmonie de Paris as composer, performer, and curator. An avid collaborator, he has worked with choreographers Benjamin Millepied at the Paris Opéra Ballet, Bobbi Jene Smith at the Juilliard School, Justin Peck and Kyle Abraham at New York City Ballet; artists Sufjan Stevens, The National, Teitur, Anohni, James Blake and Paul Simon. His work for film includes scores for for The Reader (2008) and Kill Your Darlings (2013), and the BBC adaptation of Howards End (2017). Recordings of his works have been released by Decca and Nonesuch, and he is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008).

Nico’s website

Niecy Blues
Exit Simulation
Kranky

South Carolina singer and producer Niecy Blues describes her songwriting process like an undertow: “I feel a strange pull, and let it carry me, following swirling leaves… whole days roll by, forgetting about the body.” Her full-length debut, Exit Simulation, captures this sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads, ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations – often within the same track. The title is taken from a science fiction novel they read during the purgatory of the pandemic, alluding to a dimensional ideation of departure – “the permission to imagine leaving.”

Recorded in her current home of Charleston, they characterize the album’s mood in terms both reflective and raw: an exploration of things suppressed, foundations beginning to crack, “talking myself off a ledge.” The music of Niecy Blues transposes reverie and reckoning into emotive devotionals of keys, guitar, bass, synth, and bewitched voice, steeped in sacred atmospheres gleaned from a youth spent in a religious Oklahoma household: “My first experience with ambient music was church – slow songs of worship, with delay on the guitar… even if you don’t believe, you feel something.”

Niecy’s website

Splinter Reeds plays Paula Matthusen 

Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to composing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing”. Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered. Recent areas of creative inquiry include extensive field recording, which has led to compositions and sound projects in aqueducts, caves, and sites of historic infrastructure.

Paula’s website

Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Pete Townshend, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, & Special Guests

PETE TOWNSHEND is known principally as the lead guitarist and composer for The Who, as well as for his solo career. His career with The Who spans sixty years, during which time Townshend has written well over a hundred songs for the band’s twelve studio albums, including the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia and the rock radio staple Who’s Next. From classic singles such as ‘My Generation’ and ‘Substitute’ to Tommy, Life House and Quadrophenia, Townshend has always been at the forefront of his profession. Known mainly as a guitarist and singer, he is also an accomplished keyboard player. As a solo artist he has released seven studio albums, several live albums including Deep End Live! (1986), Live at Sadler’s Wells (1999) and Live at La Jolla (two shows) (2001). In 2000 Pete Townshend released the six-CD box set, Lifehouse Chronicles. Other albums include his home demo releases, Scoop (1983), Another Scoop (1987) and Scoop 3 (2001). He’s released several singles, several of them taken from his studio albums, and in 2014, ‘It Must Be Done’ for TV drama series The Americans and in 2023 ‘Can’t Outrun The Truth.

Pete’s website

Photo by Rick Guest

Peter Evans’ Being & Becoming

Being & Becoming was formed by trumpeter and composer Peter Evans in 2017. The group has become Evans’ primary band and compositional outlet, synthesizing both an enormous range of influences, as well as the incredible stylistic diversity of the band members. The group has released two albums, their eponymous debut in 2020 and the symphonic work Ars Memoria in 2022, both on Evans’ label More is More. 2023 and 24 has seen the group tour major festivals and venues in the USA and Europe constantly developing new music.. A new album has been recorded in 2024 at the legendary Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey, for release in 2025. All four members are recognized as leading virtuosi on their respective instruments, and have thriving careers as soloists, bandleaders, producers and composers.

Peter Evans – trumpets, compositions
Joel Ross – vibraphone, synth
Nick Joz – bass, bass synth
Michael Shekwoaga Ode – drums

Peter’s website

Rachel Grimes with members of Longleash

Rachel Grimes is a composer and pianist based in Kentucky who creates music for chamber ensembles, orchestras, film, multi-media installations, and collaborative live performances. For Long Play, she will be joined by Pala Garcia (violin), and John Popham (cello) of the Brooklyn trio Longleash.

Rachel’s website

The four virtuosic and inventive composer-performers of The Rhythm Method strive to reimagine the string quartet in a contemporary, feminist context. Their continually expanding practice encompasses improvisation, vocalization, graphic notation, songwriting, and theater. The quartet has performed across the country and abroad, at venues including Roulette, the MIT Museum, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morris Museum, and the Noguchi Museum, and have been featured artists at the Lucerne Festival Forward, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn’s String Theories Festival, MATA Festival, Music Mondays, TriBeCa New Music, and the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Moving Sounds Festival.

Marina Kifferstein, violin

Leah Asher, violin

Carrie Frey, viola

Meaghan Burke, cello

their website

Anaïs Maviel is a composer, artist, vocalist & multi-instrumentalist dedicated to translating spiritual concepts to sensory experiences, using sound as medicine & alchemy. With traditional and experimental approaches, her works investigate the power of sound to shape reality, and emphasize the relevance of cultural hybridity. She navigates song, choral, instrumental, orchestral music and staging with a strong connection to cosmologies of sound and speech rooted in oral traditions such as mantra and ring shout. She strives to bridge the gaps between genres & to create a diverse, inclusive, yet sacred musical experience. Highlights in her collaborations include Alarm Will Sound, Meredith Monk, Craig Taborn, Meshell Ndegeocello, Chiquita Magic & William Parker. She writes, performs and facilitates collective vocal liberation in New York, throughout the Americas and Europe, in concert halls, museums and public spaces. Both solo albums hOULe & in the garden received international acclaim, and among the abundant press shout outs, Jazz Right Now has called her a “unique aesthetic visionary”. She is an awardee of the 2019 Van Lier Fellowship, 2020 American Composers Forum Create, 2021-2022 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, 2022 NYFA Artists Fellowship, 2023 New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy, and a 2023 Herb Alpert Award in Music nominee. Lastly, she holds a masters degree from Paris Diderot University in modern literature, aesthetics and contemporary thought, which led her to write about the stakes of music & utopia in the creolized world. One can read her poetic essays in the form of intimate newsletters she shares sporadically.

Anaïs’s website

Photo by Mariana Meraz

Ringdown’s music is like calling your first love on a rotary telephone, percussively tearing out the hammers from a 1924 vintage upright, and flinging each of them into space while you wait for every heartache you’ve ever felt to quietly return. Collaborators Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan—who between the two of them have a Pulitzer Prize, a handful of Grammys, and a “Best Drum Major” Award—describe Ringdown as an electronic cinematic pop duo based in Portland, OR and New York, NY. Others have described Ringdown as the love child of Johannes Brahms and Brandi Carlile—if they were born in the same century and if Brahms was a queer woman. You decide.

Ringdown’s website

photo by Anja Schutz

Salamanda is a Seoul-based Leftfield Ambient music producer/DJ duo of Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda).

The electronic duo who believes every sound has its own beauty, loves to create imagined worlds with their colorful, dreamy and organic palette of sounds. Their albums released on international labels including Good Morning Tapes (FR), Small Méasures (UK) and Human Pitch (US) have earned praise from the likes of Crack, Pitchfork, RA and many others.

With radio residencies on LYL (FR) and NTS (UK) as well as their sound works for multiple fashion films, animations, festivals and exhibitions, Salamanda continues to reach out to a wider range of listeners around the world.

Salamanda’s website

A native from Lisboa, Portuguese Sara Serpa is a singer, composer, improviser, who through her practice and performance, explores the use of the voice as an instrument. Serpa has been working in the field of jazz, improvised and experimental music, since moving to New York in 2008. Literature, film, visual arts, nature and history inspire Serpa in the creative process and development of her music. Described by the New York Times as “a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook,” and by the JazzTimes magazine as “a master of wordless landscapes,” Serpa started her recording and performing career with jazz luminaries such as Grammy-nominated pianist, Danilo Perez, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow pianist, Ran Blake.

Sara’s website

photo by Andre Matos

Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, pianist and composer Marta Sánchez charts a significant path through her innovative and original music, gaining significant global recognition.

Marta’s Website

Greg Ward is a saxophonist and composer that was born in Peoria, IL. Currently based in Chicago, Ward has had the opportunity to perform and record with a varied group of artists like Prefuse 73, Lupe Fiasco, Tortoise, William Parker, Andrew D’Angelo, and Mike Reed.

Greg’s website

Pakistani-American drummer and composer Qasim Naqvi is perhaps best known as a founding member of acoustic trio Dawn of Midi. Outside of his work in DOM, Naqvi is an accomplished solo artist with a passion for analogue and modular synthesizer systems.

Qasim’s website

Photo Credit: Julia Drummond

Sophia Jani Six Pieces for Solo Violin, performed by Maiani da Silva 

Sophia Jani is a composer of contemporary classical music from Germany. She is the current Composer in Residence of the Dallas Symphony and was the Artist in Residence at the Arvo Pärt Center in 2023. In May 2024, she released her “Six Pieces for Solo Violin” on Squama Recordings, which are characterized by their calmness and poise, bending the boundaries of the instrument while maintaining the illusion of simplicity. Maiani da Silva will perform the “Six Pieces for Solo Violin” at the Long Play Festival 2025.

Sophia’s website

photo credit Tonda Bardehle

Splinter Reeds plays Paula Matthusen 

Splinter Reeds is a paradigm-shifting reed quintet, celebrated for their virtuosic performances and adventurous programming. For more than a decade, the ensemble has been instrumental in shepherding new compositions into the contemporary chamber music repertoire by some of the foremost composers of our time while equally championing music by a new generation of artists. Founded in 2013 in Oakland, California, the ensemble comprises five musicians who are pioneers of their practice, individually expanding the possibilities of their instruments and collectively reimagining what a modern reed quintet can sound like.

Bill Kalinkos, clarinet
Kyle Bruckmann, oboe
Nicki Roman, saxophone
Jeff Anderle, bass clarinet
Dana Jessen, bassoon

Splinter Reeds’ website

photo by Lenny Gonzalez

Nico Muhly The Street, performed by Stef Van Vynckt

Stef Van Vynckt is a Belgian harpist whose artistry pushes the expressive boundaries of the harp, from delicate textures to bold, abrasive sounds and raw, punk-infused energy. His collaborations with innovative voices in new music—including Dai Fujikura, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Jason Eckardt, Christopher Cerrone, Alexander Schubert, and Elena Rykova—continue to redefine contemporary harp music. Performing with ensembles like Ensemble Modern and at renowned venues and festivals such as Bang on a Can’s LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA, Classical:NEXT, and cresc… Biennale für aktuelle Musik, Stef brings a fearless, explorative spirit to every project.

Stef’s website

STRING NOISE plays Christian Wolff’s solo and duo violin pieces

STRING NOISE, New York’s most daring violin duo, is composed of violinists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris is recognized for their distinct blend of disparate genres, from arrangements of songs by punk legends to conceptual minimalist treatises by Alvin Lucier. Premieres by String Noise include works by George Lewis, Christian Wolff, Michael Byron, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Paula Matthusen, John King, Phill Niblock, Caleb Burhans, Catherine Lamb, David Lang, Petr Kotik, Du Yun, Annie Gosfield, Bernhard Lang, John Zorn, Greg Saunier, Alex Mincek, Tyondai Braxton, Eric Lyon and others. String Noise has recorded for Northern Spy Records, Dymaxion Groove, Black Truffle Records, Cold Blue Records, New Focus Recordings, Infrequent Seams and Nouveau Electric Records and has been featured on WNYC, WKCR, WFMU and BBC Radio.

Conrad Harris, Violin

Pauline Kim Harris, Violin

their website

photo by Chris Bradley

Los Angeles-based musician Tashi Wada works within a heady, intergenerational slipstream bridging storied East and West Coast art music institutions, and the DIY experimental scenes that emerged in the 2000s and 2010s. Between recording and performing with his creative and life partner, Julia Holter, and running his record label Saltern, Wada has carved a unique path as a forward-thinking composer alongside a tight network of collaborators, drawing on diverse influences and exchanges. Wada’s new album for RVNG Intl., What Is Not Strange?, strips away preconceptions of the scope of his music, presenting complex, pop-informed compositions that bristle with joy.

Tashi’s website

photo by Dicky Bahto

Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Pete Townshend, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, & Special Guests

Long Play presents a 90th birthday spotlight-celebration of Terry Riley with guitar legend Pete Townshend performing the original ‘free fall solo version’ of his signature tribute Baba O’Riley, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiering a new version of Riley’s iconic and inspirational A Rainbow in Curved Air, arranged by Gyan Riley, plus Riley’s minimalist classic In C performed by an All-Star cast including Pete Townshend and special guests.

Terry’s website

Tim Hecker is a Juno Award-winning Canadian composer and musician, born in Vancouver. In the past two decades, he has produced a wide output, released by the likes of Kranky and 4AD. He focuses on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance, and melody in his work, fostering an approach to songcraft which is both physical and emotive, his work being described as “structured ambient”, “tectonic color plates”, and “cathedral electronic music”.

His discography spans over 10 albums including the critically acclaimed Ravedeath 1972, Harmony in Ultraviolet, and Virgins.

Hecker also composes original scores, most recently for the BBC series The North Water and the Brandon Cronenberg movie Infinity Pool.

Tim’s website

Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community. A 2022 MacArthur and Herb Alpert awardee, 2021 USA Fellow, 2019 Foundation of the Arts and 2016 3Arts recipient, Reid received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017. From 2019-2021 Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition.

Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has been described as “a singular talent” (Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes), ”NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “one of the most original jazz guitarists of our time” (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily), and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). In recent Downbeat Critics Polls Halvorson has been celebrated as guitarist, rising star jazz artist, and rising star composer of the year, and in 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

The diversity of Jason Roebke’s musical associations make him one of the most sought after bassists, composers, and educators in Chicago and beyond. His music is rooted in jazz and takes inspiration from experimental music, noise, and improvisation. Solo performance and a duo with dancer Ayako Kato are also at the forefront of his creative activities. As a double bassist, his playing is intensely physical, audacious, and sparse. The Chicago Reader described his work as “a carefully orchestrated rummage through a hardware store.” In 2009, he was awarded the Fellowship in Music Composition from the Illinois Arts Council. Roebke tours widely in the US and Europe.

Tomas Fujiwara is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer. Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming” (Troy Collins, Point of Departure), Tomas is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation, with his bands Triple Double (with Gerald Cleaver, Mary Halvorson, Brandon Seabrook, Ralph Alessi, and Taylor Ho Bynum), Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up (with Jonathan Finlayson, Brian Settles, Halvorson, and Michael Formanek) and The Tomas Fujiwara Trio (with Alessi and Seabrook); his collaborative duo with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum; the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Halvorson and Formanek); and a diversity of creative sideman work with forward thinking peers like Tomeka Reid and Matana Roberts.

Tomeka’s website

photo by Laurence Miner

Tujiko Noriko is a musician, singer, songwriter and filmmaker based in France. Shortly after her demo was discovered by Peter Rehberg and Christian Fennesz in 2000, she released her debut album “Shojo-Toshi” on the renowned Mego label (later Editions Mego). Tujiko has to date released over twenty critically acclaimed albums on the labels Editions Mego, FatCat, Room 40 and PAN. She has performed worldwide, including international festivals Sonar, Benicassim and Mutek. Her 2002 album ‘Hard Ni Sasete’ received an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica. In 2017, she co-wrote and co-directed with Joji Koyama the feature length film ‘Kuro’ which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and later streamed on Mubi. Tujiko has also written music for films, dance performances, animations and art installations – she composed the soundtrack to the 2020 film ‘Surge’, which screened at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival, and her music was included in the exhibition ‘Audiosphere’ at Museo Reina Sofia – the first exhibition in a major contemporary art museum with no images and no objects at all. Her latest album is Crepuscule I&II, from Editions Mego.

This performance is sponsored by AvanTokyo

Tujiko’s website

photo by Chloe Fabre

Valentina Magaletti is a Drummer-composer and multi-instrumentalist with an inventive approach to drums and percussion. Her versatile technique, which can incorporate anything from vibes and marimba to contact microphones and found objects, results in a style that is forever evolving. Feeling just as comfortable performing behind a delicate ceramic kit as she does hammering out motorik rhythms, her creative take on percussion has resulted in a diverse discography and many interesting collaborations.

Valentina’s website

photo by Louise Mason

Michael Gordon Material, performed by Yarn/Wire

Yarn/Wire is a New York based percussion and piano quartet (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative, experimental new music. The ensemble is admired globally for the energy and care it brings to performances of today’s most adventurous music, and New York Classical Review states that“Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the classical scene today.” Founded in 2005, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and their creative potential.

Yarn/Wire’s Website

photo credit: Mark Sommerfeld