Friday, May 2 – Sunday, May 4, 2025
A Supercharged Musical Ride through Right Now
50+ concerts throughout Brooklyn, New York
“Long Play…is already the most important classical music festival in New York City.”
—The New York Times
3-Day Pass: $235 | SUPPORTER Pass: $350 | Single day pass: $95
(plus fees)
A Special Long Play Preview for Supporter Pass Holders
Tim Hecker is a Canadian composer and musician exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance, and melody, fostering an approach to songcraft which is both physical and emotive – “structured ambient,” “tectonic color plates,” “cathedral electronic music.”
Loidis – an alias of American techno producer and DJ Brian Leeds – creates swirling ambient, minimal, and dub techno.
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.
Kim Gordon and her band perform a set of songs from her latest solo album, the Grammy-nominated, The Collective. Opening for Kim Gordon is I.U.D. and Kassie Krut.
Long Play presents the world premiere of Henry Threadgill’s Listen Ship scored for two pianos and six guitars! Featuring pianists Maya Keren and Rahul Carlberg, guitarists Brandon Ross, Bill Frisell, Gregg Belisle-Chi, Miles Okazaki, Stomu Takeishi, and Henry Threadgill, conductor.
Formed by trumpeter and composer Peter Evans in 2017, Being & Becoming synthesizes an enormous range of influences and the incredible stylistic diversity of the band members. Peter Evans – trumpets, compositions / Joel Ross – vibraphone, synth / Nick Joz – bass, bass synth / Michael Shekwoaga Ode – drums.
Anthony Braxton is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and was a key early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.Composed in the early 1970s, Braxton’s Composition No. 19 is a processional performance for 100 Tubas – FREE in Fort Greene Park!
Arvo Pärt is one of those composers in the world, whose creative output has significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music. In 1976, he created a unique musical language called tintinnabuli, that has reached a vast audience of various listeners and that has defined his work right up to today. There is no compositional school that follows Pärt, nor does he teach, nevertheless, a large part of contemporary music has been influenced by his tintinnabuli compositions.
Based in Brooklyn, American Opera Projects (AOP) has been at the forefront of the contemporary opera movement for over thirty years.
Julius Eastman was an American composer, pianist, vocalist, performance artist, and conductor who contributed to new music scenes in New York, Buffalo, and Chicago, touring and recording as a performer and enjoying many performances of his own music. As a conductor, musician, and vocalist, he had a close artistic relationship with Arthur Russell and worked briefly with Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez. He worked in a variety of musical styles, including classical, jazz, and crossover.
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.
Isaac Jean-François’s research on Julius Eastman is featured in an issue of Current Musicology in an essay titled, “Julius Eastman: The Sonority of Blackness Otherwise.” His research as a doctoral student at Yale includes black studies, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and queer studies.
Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Bill Frisell (guitar) perform a tribute to jazz guitar legend Johnny Smith.
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.”
Dither is a New York-based electric guitar quartet that presents “sophisticated, hard-driving & stylistically omnivorous music making.”—NYT.
Anaïs Maviel is a composer, artist, vocalist & multi-instrumentalist dedicated to translating spiritual concepts to sensory experiences, using sound as medicine & alchemy.
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. Marina Kifferstein, violin / Leah Asher, violin / Carrie Frey, viola / Meaghan Burke, cello.
“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. 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.”
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. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo reviewed the album for Talkhouse, saying it “sends you, moves you, destroys you with beauty.”
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.
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.
John Cage was an American avant-garde composer whose inventive compositions and unorthodox ideas profoundly influenced mid-20th-century music. Sonatas and Interludes is a cycle of twenty pieces for prepared piano composed in 1946–48, shortly after Cage’s introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major influences on the composer’s later work. Significantly more complex than his other works for prepared piano, Sonatas and Interludes is generally recognized as one of Cage’s finest achievements.
A pioneer of DIY culture in classical music, pianist Adam Tendler has become one of today’s most recognized and celebrated performers in classical-contemporary music.
Nico Muhly is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, chamber music and sacred music.
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.
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
Kate Moore‘s 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.
Program, performed by Ensemble Offspring:
Fern (quartet + backing track)
Blackbird Song (trio)
Synaesthesia Suite (violin solo + backing track)
Joyful Melodies (vibraphone solo)
Rose of roses, flower of flowers (violin, flute, clarinet, percussion + backing track)
Efraín Rojas is a Peruvian interdisciplinary artist, researcher and robotics maker. His work was described as “An incredible physical presence” by The New York Times and as “A heady confluence of technology, culture and cognition” by The New Yorker.
New York’s Talujon performs Gérard Grisey’s experiential masterwork , Le Noir de l’Étoile, for six percussion stations that surround the audience.
Described by The New York Times as possessing an “edgy, unflagging energy”, Talujon is composed of percussionists Ian Antonio, Caitlin Cawley, David Cossin, Matthew Gold, Tom Kolor, Michael Lipsey, and Matt Ward.
Composer, violinist and NYC impresario David Handler presents the world premiere screening of five music videos created for his upcoming debut album Life Like Violence, out May 16th on Cantaloupe Music. Handler composes acoustic and electronic music that has been described by the New York Times as “eerie and superbly wrought…exploring polarities of light and dark, the sacred and the profane.”
Screening followed by Q&A moderated by a special guest to be announced.
*this is a limited seats event, RSVP link coming soon*
The Pyramids was founded over fifty years ago in 1972 by saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor, Margaux Simmons and Kimathi Asante. The band’s recent work explores the future, the past and the urgent reality of the present.
Idris Ackamoor: Alto and Tenor Saxophone, piano, vocals / Margaux Simmons: Flutes and vocals / Sandi Poindexter: Violins and vocals / Bobby Cobb: Guitar and vocals / Mark Williams: Bass / Randall Merritt: Drums / Shakoor Hakeem: Congas and percussions
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 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.
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.
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.
STRING NOISE, New York’s most daring violin duo, is composed of violinists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris and is recognized for their distinct blend of disparate genres, from arrangements of songs by punk legends to conceptual minimalist treatises by Alvin Lucier.
broom is a brooklyn based community-funded experimental cleaning service including Kyle Hodgkin, Daniel Vila, Seb Mahal.
Underground System is a shape-shifting force in New York City’s dance music scene, fusing afrobeat, punk, and disco into a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is infectious.
Body/Head are an American experimental electric guitar duo composed of Kim Gordon and Bill Nace.
Takahide Higuchi a.k.a Foodman, creates music that defies categorisations – and is one of the few artists that actually fit this overused description with traces of almost every electronic music genre, from juke, footwork, ambient, house, techno, to noise, dissected and morphed together then driven to extreme without giving you a second to come up with a definitive genre.
emptyset is a London/Berlin based production project formed in 2005 by James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas, examining the material properties of sound and its correspondence with architecture, performance and physical modes of production.
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. 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.
This performance is only available with a MAX PASS. [sold out]
Described as a “New Jazz Power Source” by the New York Times, 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 over the last decade. Her distinctive melodic sensibility, always rooted in a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years. Tomeka Reid, cello / Mary Halvorson, electric guitar / Jason Roebke, bass / Tomas Fujiwara, drums.
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.”
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.
Moritz von Oswald is revered as a pioneering architect of electronic music, whose foundational work with Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound has indelibly shaped the contours of the wide-reaching genre. In recent years, von Oswald has ventured into avant-garde territories, exploring the intersection of electronic soundscapes and improvisational music with projects like the Moritz von Oswald Trio or his Silencio project.
andPlay is committed to expanding the existing violin/viola duo repertoire by commissioning new works and collaborating closely with living artists. The New York City-based duo of Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola, first played to an eager crowd on Fire Island in the summer of 2012 and has since commissioned over forty-five works and performed all over the USA and Europe.
Guest artists: Thea Mesirow: cello / Tristan Kasten-Krause: double bass / Corie Rose Soumah: rainbow synth / Karl Larson: rainbow synth.
New York’s ultra-adventurous Talea Ensemble performs Fausto Romitelli’s dense and psychedelic Manifesto, guided by the star of Henri Michaux and inspired by the poet’s descriptions of the effects of mescaline.
Buke and Gase is the experimental project of Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer. 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; 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.
Prolific drummer/composer Dave King is well known for his propulsive work in a number of different bands. From The Bad Plus to Happy Apple to Halloween, Alaska, each group has its own sound and approach, but all are approached in a steadfast manner. These groups are all serious units of focused players who are completely dialed in, honing a solid band sound and identity. It is King’s attraction to a strong group concept that led to his creation of his Trucking Company band and his increasing focus thereon. The band includes Brooklyn based bassist Chris Morrissey, the saxophone (and clarinet!) of Brooklynite Chris Speed, saxophonist Brandon Wozniak and guitarist Erik Fratzke.
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.
David Lang writes: There is a big gulf between the way that classical music teaches us to experience emotions and the way that our emotions are actually felt. We have a great tradition in Western music of embracing great swings of temperament and mood – we have no problem thinking that a piece can move seamlessly from something that is whisper-soft to ear-splittingly loud. When I think of how my life actually works, however, I don’t think of it in terms of giant emotional leaps from one extreme to another – most of my emotional range is not from extreme bliss to gut-wrenching misery and back, all in a short period of time; my range is much more narrow, and too slowly changing for that. In my piece darker I wanted to make a piece of music that more closely matches my own emotional narrative than the narrative we have inherited from the dramatic music of the past.
Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. 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.
Splinter Reeds is a paradigm-shifting reed quintet, celebrated for their virtuosic performances and adventurous programming.
Bill Kalinkos: clarinet / Kyle Bruckmann: oboe / Nicki Roman: saxophone / Jeff Anderle: bass clarinet / Dana Jessen, bassoon
The convergence of flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes occurred during a performance at Merkin Hall in 2019, where Mitchell joined Irreversible Entanglements for a collaborative set. This performance motivated the three musicians to reunite in 2022 at The Stone and record an album of ever-evolving rhythms with Mitchell’s flute adding both fluidity and kineticism to the ensemble’s sound. Their collaboration exemplifies a shared commitment to transformative, make-you-want-to-dance experiences.
With twenty years of DJing at the world’s top clubs and almost a hundred releases under different monikers to his credit, one might think that Francis Harris had reached the pinnacle of his career, or at least firmly established his niche; but 2012 marked a pivotal year for the Brooklyn-based producer in which his true potential as a composer, producer and label executive was revealed.
Highsmith + is Ikue Mori (electronics), Craig Taborn (piano) joined by Tomeka Reid (cello).
Recognition – Reinventing Memory Through Sound
In this special concert adaptation of Recognition – a documentary exploring Portugal’s colonial past through archival footage, music, and revolutionary texts – Portuguese vocalist-composer Sara Serpa leads a new ensemble in a reinvention of the film’s musical material, expanding its sonic and emotional depth. Joined by Greg Ward (alto saxophone), Marta Sánchez (piano), and Qasim Naqvi (modular synth), Serpa reshapes the original score into a dynamic and immersive live experience, where composition and improvisation merge to evoke memory, displacement, and resistance. The interplay between Serpa’s ethereal vocal textures, Ward’s expressive saxophone lines, Sánchez’s fluid harmonies, and Naqvi’s electronic pulses reimagines the film’s themes through sound, embodying both the fragmentation and reconstruction of history.
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 music strips away preconceptions of the scope of his music, presenting complex, pop-informed compositions that bristle with joy. For this performance he will be joined by Julia Holter!
Sophia Jani is a composer of contemporary classical music from Germany whose works are characterized by their calmness and poise, bending the boundaries of the instrument while maintaining the illusion of simplicity.
Violinist Maiani da Silva is a sought-after soloist, chamber musician, educator, and collaborator in contemporary music and beyond.
Diving from starlit heights to ocean depths, Cousin’s echoes step through tempos and styles while summoning surreal sonic landscapes centered in spacious atmospherics, subterranean bass pressure and rhythmic hypnotisms. Hailing from Australia, Cousin channels the local flora, infusing his work with their variegated vibrancy. Whether DJing a teeming warehouse party or conjuring up a mesmerizing live set, Cousin’s versatility as an artist and fluency in navigating across different energy levels comes from a place of unrestrained imagination and otherworldly inspiration.
Iannis Xenakis was a composer, architect, and mathematician widely known for his ground-breaking percussion music and pioneering use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic and computer music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances.
Program, performed by Ensemble Offspring:
Iannis Xenakis – mikka/mikka S
Iannis Xenakis – Charisma
Iannis Xenakis – Rebonds b/a
Claude Vivier – Piece for violin and clarinet
Felicity Wilcox – People of this Place
Brenda Gifford – Mungala
Nour Harkati is a renowned Tunisian musician and singer-songwriter known for his innovative blend of traditional North African music and contemporary influences. Mastering the ancient Guembri and infusing his work with modern rhythms, Harkati crafts a unique sound that resonates deeply with diverse audiences. His lyrics combine philosophical depth with a jubilant spirit, making his music both introspective and uplifting.
Nour Harkati: guembri, vocals / Leo Yucht: drums / Josh Uguccioni: bass / Khalil Lajmi: bendir, FX / Youssef Khiari: guitar / Mehdi Lalaoui: kerkaba
With twenty years of DJing at the world’s top clubs and almost a hundred releases under different monikers to his credit, one might think that Francis Harris had reached the pinnacle of his career, or at least firmly established his niche; but 2012 marked a pivotal year for the Brooklyn-based producer in which his true potential as a composer, producer and label executive was revealed.
Julia Wolfe writes: Cruel Sister is a stirring and fantastic Old English ballad. The tale is of two sisters— one bright as the sun, and the other cold and dark. One day, so that she can have the love of a young man who has come courting, the dark sister pushes the bright sister into the sea. Two minstrels find the dead sister washed up on the shore and shape her breastbone into a fine harp strung with her yellow hair. They come to play at the cold dark sister’s wedding. As the sound of the harp reaches the bride’s ears, the ballad concludes “and surely now her tears will flow.” While my piece references no words and quotes no music from the original tune, it does follow the dramatic arc of the ballad— the music reflecting an argument that builds, a body floating on the sea, the mad harp.
Tujiko Noriko is a musician, singer, songwriter and filmmaker based in France who has released over twenty critically acclaimed albums. She has performed worldwide, and has also written music for films, dance performances, animations and art installations.
This performance is sponsored by AvanTokyo and the Japan Foundation.
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.
S T A R R busby is a Black experimental artist who sings, acts, composes, educates, and is committed to the liberation of all people.
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. They have 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.
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 music captures this sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads, ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations. 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.”
Drummer and composer Tomas Fujiwara convenes a first time trio with cellist Tomeka Reid and saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.
Ben LaMar Gay is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, poet, and patently eclectic polymath who Afropunk has called “strikingly original,” Pitchfork has called “uncategorizable,” and Jeff Parker has called “hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today.” He channels a radical array of sound, color, and space through the universal language of folklore; but despite the widely attributed genius of his work, his artistic approach and general demeanor are characterized by an endearing humbleness and warm humanity.
broom is a brooklyn based community-funded experimental cleaning service including Kyle Hodgkin, Daniel Vila, Seb Mahal.
Beaufort Scales is composer Christopher Cerrone’s dramatic and alluring music for women’s voices and electronics, performed by the acclaimed Lorelei Ensemble and the composer. Its title and primary text come from a 19th-century measure of wind speeds.
Heralded for its “full-bodied and radiant sound” (The New York Times), the Lorelei Ensemble is recognized for bold and inventive programs that champion the extraordinary flexibility and virtuosity of the human voice.
Moritz von Oswald is revered as a pioneering architect of electronic music, whose foundational work with Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound has indelibly shaped the contours of the wide-reaching genre. In recent years, von Oswald has ventured into avant-garde territories, exploring the intersection of electronic soundscapes and improvisational music with projects like the Moritz von Oswald Trio or his Silencio project.
Long Play presents a 90th birthday spotlight-celebration of Terry Riley with 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 of special guests.
Bang on a Can All-Stars:
Vicky Chow – keyboard synth / David Cossin – percussion / Arlen Hlusko – cello / Taylor Levine – electric guitar / Chris Lightcap – upright bass /Ken Thomson – clarinet and bass clarinet
With special guests:
Gyan Riley – electric guitar / Krishna Bhatt – sitar / Valentina Magaletti – percussion / Nicole Mitchell – flute / Suphala – tabla / Clara Warnaar – percussion / Michael Harrison – keyboard
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.
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.”
Photo by Mark Shelby Perry
*available with a Long Play MAX PASS only*
American Opera Projects plays Arvo Pärt
American Opera Projects (AOP) is a non-profit organization that provides resources and opportunities to artists for the creation of new lyric theater. Based in Brooklyn, AOP has been at the forefront of the contemporary opera movement for over thirty years through the commissioning, developing, and producing of opera and lyric theater projects, training programs for student and emerging composers and librettists, and community engagement.
Guest Artists: String Orchestra of Brooklyn; Sarah Moulton Faux; GHOSTLIGHT Chorus
andPlay is committed to expanding the existing violin/viola duo repertoire by commissioning new works and collaborating closely with living artists. The New York City-based duo of Maya Bennardo, violin, and Hannah Levinson, viola, first played to an eager crowd on Fire Island in the summer of 2012 and has since commissioned over forty-five works and performed all over the USA and Europe. They have released albums on Another Timbre, Dinzu Artefacts, and New Focus Recordings.
Guest artists:
Thea Mesirow, cello
Tristan Kasten-Krause, double bass
Corie Rose Soumah, rainbow synth
Karl Larson, rainbow synth
Photo by Shervin Lainez
Anthony Braxton’s Composition No. 19 (For 100 Tubas)
Anthony Braxton is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and was a key early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He received great acclaim for his 1969 double-LP record For Alto, the first full-length album of solo saxophone music.
American Opera Project plays Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is one of those composers in the world, whose creative output has significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music. In 1976, he created a unique musical language called tintinnabuli, that has reached a vast audience of various listeners and that has defined his work right up to today. There is no compositional school that follows Pärt, nor does he teach, nevertheless, a large part of the contemporary music has been influenced by his tintinnabuli compositions.
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 with special guests: Michael Harrison (keys), Clara Warnaar (percussion), Suphala (tabla), Krishna Bhatt (sitar), and Nicole Mitchell (flute).
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
photo by Christopher Pelham
Ben LaMar Gay is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, poet, and patently eclectic polymath who Afropunk has called “strikingly original,” Pitchfork has called “uncategorizable,” and Jeff Parker has called “hands down, one of my favorite musicians on the planet today.” He channels a radical array of sound, color, and space through the universal language of folklore; but despite the widely attributed genius of his work, his artistic approach and general demeanor are characterized by an endearing humbleness and warm humanity.
Photo by Chelsea Ross
David Lang Darker, performed by Ensemble Signal, with film by Bill Morrison
Bill Morrison is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who has been called “the poet laureate of lost films” (New York Times, 9/21/2021). He is best known for two cult classics: Decasia (2002), the first film of the 21st century to be named to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, and Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) which has often been listed as one of the best films of its decade (2010s). His last film, Incident (2023) won the International Documentary Association Award, Cinema Eye Honors, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2025 for Documentary Short.
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.
Body/Head are an American experimental electric guitar duo composed of Kim Gordon and Bill Nace. They began working together in 2011 in Northampton, Massachusetts, but the Body/Head concept evolved more specifically in early 2012. Their debut album, Coming Apart, was released on Matador Records on September 10, 2013
‘broom is a brooklyn based community-funded experimental cleaning service’
The personnelle is –
Kyle Hodgkin
Daniel Vila
Seb Mahal
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.
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.
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.
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.
photo by Adi Meyerson
andPlay plays Catherine Lamb
In the music of Catherine Lamb (b. 1982, Olympia, Washington USA), the mathematics of harmony are explored through the physicality of the material world. Lamb gives voice to crystalline structures of the harmonic series through subtleties of friction, pressure, breath, and bow changes that shape how the idealized harmonies speak. The musical forms she constructs connect the sonic with the tactile and the visual, rendering transparent what once was opaque, transmuting flesh to bone, passing from shadow into light. These dualities and metaphors reflect Lamb’s deep interest in the fundamental nature of sound and often find themselves in the titles of her pieces: shade/gradient (2012), point/wave (2015), interius/exterius (2022).
Photo by Ruicamilo
Christopher Cerrone Beaufort Scales performed By Lorelei Ensemble
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.
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.
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
Photo by Clayton Holyoak
Diving from starlit heights to ocean depths, Cousin’s echoes step through tempos and styles while summoning surreal sonic landscapes centered in spacious atmospherics, subterranean bass pressure and rhythmic hypnotisms. Hailing from Australia, Cousin channels the local flora, infusing his work with their variegated vibrancy. Now found on constant rotation of both hemispheres, creating indelible memoried and weaving magical dance-floor moments through clubs and festivals across North America, UK, Europe and Asia. Whether DJing a teeming warehouse party or conjuring up a mesmerizing live set, Cousin’s versatility as an artist and fluency in navigating across different energy levels comes from a place of unrestrained imagination and otherworldly inspiration.
Photo by Sherry Zheng
Prolific drummer/composer Dave King is well known for his propulsive work in a number of different bands. From The Bad Plus to Happy Apple to Halloween, Alaska, each group has its own sound and approach, but all are approached in a steadfast manner. These groups are all serious units of focused players who are completely dialed in, honing a solid band sound and identity. It is King’s attraction to a strong group concept that led to his creation of his Trucking Company band and his increasing focus thereon. On its third recording, Surrounded By The Night, the Trucking Company has solidified its identity with new material and a slightly changed lineup. The addition of the Minneapolis born, Brooklyn based bassist Chris Morrissey strengthens the Minnesota-New York connection that has been part of the identity of the ensemble, featuring the saxophone (and clarinet!) of Brooklynite Chris Speed alongside Minnesotans saxophonist Brandon Wozniak and guitarist Erik Fratzke, since its inception.
Photo by Corey Dewald
David Handler (born July 24, 1980) is a composer, violinist/violist, and entrepreneur. He has collaborated with leading classical performers and popular artists alike, and has received premieres and commissions from Lincoln Center, BAM, and Central Park’s Naumburg Orchestral Concerts. Handler is the co-founder and owner of (Le) Poisson Rouge as well as the founder and co-artistic director of Ensemble LPR, for which the New Yorker referred to him as “the Ian Schrager of the music scene.” Handler’s speaking engagements include Lincoln Center, New York University, and Johns Hopkins University, and he sits on the boards of CavanKerry Press and the David Lynch Foundation. He is a citizen of the United States and Ireland; he lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Photo by Mark Veltman
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.
photo credit: Peter Serling
Michael Gordon’s Amplified performed by Dither
DITHER, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire which spans composed, improvised, and electronic music. Formed in 2007, the quartet has performed across the United States and abroad, presenting new commissions, original compositions, multimedia works, and large guitar ensemble pieces. Dither’s members are Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore, and Brendon Randall-Myers.
Dither has performed and collaborated with a wide range of artists including Eve Beglarian, Nels Cline, Fred Frith, Mary Halvorson, David Lang, Ikue Mori, Phill Niblock, Lee Ranaldo, Laurie Spiegel, Lois V. Vierk, Yo La Tengo, and John Zorn. They have brought their live 13-guitar rendition of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint to The Barbican Center, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, The Ellnora Guitar Festival and WNYC’s New Sounds Live. The quartet has also performed at the Guggenheim Museum, the Bang on a Can Marathon, The Performa Biennial, The Amsterdam Electric Guitar Heaven Festival, Hong Kong’s Fringe Theater, The Winter Jazz Festival, and the Borealis Festival.
Dither produces an annual Extravaganza, a raucous festival of creative music and art, which has been called an “official concert on the edge” by the New Yorker and “the here and now of New York’s postclassical music scene” by Time Out New York. They have released four full-length albums, including Dither plays Zorn on Tzadik, featuring the premiere recordings of several of John Zorn’s improvisational game pieces, which was named one of the year’s “best avant albums” by Rolling Stone.
Peruvian interdisciplinary artist, researcher and robotics maker. His work was described as “An incredible physical presence” by The New York Times and as “A heady confluence of technology, culture and cognition” by The New Yorker. He is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow 2023-2025 for combined arts. He was a resident at The Kitchen on 2021. His album Roza Cruz with his Latin American experimental salsa project La Mecánica Popular was named one of the best albums in the world in 2018 by Gladys Palmera (Spain) and Zona de Obras (Spain), and KCRW. He has performed at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Levitation Festival, Museum of Contemporary art of Lima and Central Park Summerstage Fania Records 50th anniversary
Photo by Hans Neuman
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.
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
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.
Ensemble Signal
Brad Lubman, Conductor
Paul Coleman, Sound Engineer
Violins: Raina Arnett, Lauren Cauley, Molly Germer, Conrad Harris, Pauline Kim Harris, Courtney Orlando, Chris Otto, Ari Streisfeld
Violas: Molly Goldman, Mario Gotoh, Kal Sugatski
Celli: Frankie Carr, Lauren Radnofsky, Mariel Roberts
Bass: Greg Chudzik
photo by Stephanie Berger
Takahide Higuchi a.k.a Foodman, creates music that defies categorisations – and is one of the few artists that actually fit this overused description. There are traces of almost every electronic music genre, from juke, footwork, ambient, house, techno, to noise, but those elements are dissected and morphed together then driven to extreme without giving you a second to come up with a definitive genre. The noisy technicolour of these borderline versatile or schizophrenic collages is borne out of his experiments (or accidents) and has titillated, confused, and enchanted music obsessives far and wide.
With twenty years of DJing at the world’s top clubs and almost a hundred releases under different monikers to his credit, one might think that Francis Harris had reached the pinnacle of his career, or at least firmly established his niche; but 2012 marked a pivotal year for the Brooklyn-based producer in which his true potential as a composer, producer and label executive was revealed.
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.
photo by Peter Gannushkin
Drummer and composer Tomas Fujiwara convenes a first time trio with cellist Tomeka Reid and saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.
Tomas’ photo by Ernest Stuart
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 –
photo credit: Dmitrij Matvejev
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
Single tickets available for this show
Photo credit: Alan Nahigian
Highsmith + is Ikue Mori (electronics) Craig Taborn (piano) Tomeka Reid (cello). Their trio joins the lineup for Long Play 2025.
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.
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
The Pyramids was founded over fifty years ago in 1972. Saxophonist and composer Idris Ackamoor had originally left his hometown of Chicago to study music at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where his teachers numbered legendary pianist Cecil Taylor. Via the Antioch Abroad Program, Ackamoor landed a year’s study overseas in 1972, which allowed him, and two Antioch students, Margaux Simmons and Kimathi Asante, to travel to Europe and Africa where they co-founded The Pyramids. The trip took in a musical spiritual journey up into Northern Ghana, the land of the Fra Fra of Bolgatanga and the Islam-influenced Dagomba in Tamale, where Ackamoor taped some field recordings. “We played with the King’s musicians in Tamale,” he remembers. “I also undertook a healing ceremony in the bush of Bolgatanga with a Fra Fra traditional healer (a Juju Man).” Back in Yellow Springs, The Pyramids brought together all of the knowledge from their journey and released two independently produced albums including Lalibela (1973), and King Of Kings (1974). After graduating, Idris and the band headed to Oakland, California and quickly met other musicians in the thriving San Francisco Bay Area music scene where they recorded their third album, Birth/Speed/Merging in 1976.
The Band members of Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids are:
IDRIS ACKAMOOR – Alto and Tenor Saxophone, piano, vocals
MARGAUX SIMMONS – Flutes and vocals
SANDI POINDEXTER – Violins and vocals
BOBBY COBB – Guitar and vocals
MARK WILLIAMS – Bass
RANDALL MERRITT – Drums
SHAKOOR HAKEEM – Congas and percussions
Photo by Jelmer de Haas
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
I.U.D. is the duo of Lizzi Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance) and Sadie Laska who make, in the words of Artforum, “minimal, contagious noise-music on two drum kits and two microphones.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Taking inspiration from dub, noise, UK club music, and contemporary pop, Kassie Krut is a brand new project by Eve Alpert, Kasra Kurt (both Palm) and Matt Anderegg (Mothers, Body Meat). Kassie Krut and I.U.D. will open for Kim Gordon’s performance.
Photo by Kit Ramsey
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
Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and rapper best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, California, where her father was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Photo by Danielle Neu
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
Lush, swirling dub and ambient techno alias of Brian Leeds, also known as Huerco S. and Pendant.
Loidis is an alias of American techno producer and DJ Brian Leeds, who is also known by many other names. Focusing on swirling ambient, minimal, and dub techno, he debuted the Loidis moniker with a 2018 EP, then returned to it with the 2018 full-length One Day. Colonial Patterns As Huerco So., Brian Leeds became known as one of the main proponents of outsider house during the early 2010s. His early EPs and 2013 debut album, Colonial Patterns, contained grainy, lo-fi dance tracks, and he gradually drifted away from beat-driven material with the detached yet rhythmic ambient loops of 2016’s For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have). 2018 saw the first release by his Pendant alias, In the Place I Sit, The Floating World (& All Its Pleasures), an EP credited to Loidis and issued by the anno imprint. Leeds released additional albums as Pendant and Heurco S., then returned to the Loidis project with the 2024 double-LP One Day, released by Incienso. The lush, shimmering effort was named record of the year by Resident Advisor.
Photo by Kasia Zacharko
Christopher Cerrone Beaufort Scales performed By Lorelei Ensemble
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.
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.
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.
*available with a Long Play MAX PASS only. MAX passes are currently sold out.
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”.
Michael Gordon Midnight Choir, performed by Yarn/Wire (world premiere)
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.”
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
Photo by Chris Edwards, McColl Center for Art + Innovation
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.
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.
Moritz von Oswald Presents: Silencio
Moritz von Oswald is revered as a pioneering architect of electronic music, whose foundational work with Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound has indelibly shaped the contours of the wide-reaching genre. His solo work as well as his seminal collaborations with artists like Mark Ernestus, Carl Craig, and Juan Atkins, have deeply influenced techno and experimental genres as well as the broader electronic music genre. His innovative projects, including notable works with Nils Petter Molvaer and Laurel Halo among many others, are testament to von Oswald’s diverse musical styles, from jazz to experimental electronics. In recent years, von Oswald has ventured into avant-garde territories, exploring the intersection of electronic soundscapes and improvisational music with projects like the Moritz von Oswald Trio or his Silencio project.
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.
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).
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
Nicole Mitchell/Luke Stewart/Tcheser Holmes Trio
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
The convergence of flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes occurred during a performance at Merkin Hall in 2019, where Mitchell joined Irreversible Entanglements for a collaborative set. This performance motivated the three musicians to reunite in 2022 at The Stone and record an album of ever-evolving rhythms with Mitchell’s flute adding both fluidity and kineticism to the ensemble’s sound. Their collaboration exemplifies a shared commitment to transformative, make-you-want-to-dance experiences.
The convergence of flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes occurred during a performance at Merkin Hall in 2019, where Mitchell joined Irreversible Entanglements for a collaborative set. This performance motivated the three musicians to reunite in 2022 at The Stone and record an album of ever-evolving rhythms with Mitchell’s flute adding both fluidity and kineticism to the ensemble’s sound. Their collaboration exemplifies a shared commitment to transformative, make-you-want-to-dance experiences.
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.”
Nour Harkati is a renowned Tunisian musician and singer-songwriter known for his innovative blend of traditional North African music and contemporary influences. Mastering the ancient Guembri and infusing his work with modern rhythms, Harkati crafts a unique sound that resonates deeply with diverse audiences. His lyrics combine philosophical depth with a jubilant spirit, making his music both introspective and uplifting.
Musicians:
Guembri | Vocals : Nour Harkati
Drums : Leo Yucht
Bass : Josh Uguccioni
Bendir / FX : Khalil Lajmi
Guitar : Youssef Khiari
Kerkaba : Mehdi Lalaoui
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.
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
Joe Ross – vibraphone, synth
Nick Joz – bass, synth
Tyshawn Sorey – drums, percussion
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
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.
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.
photo by Anja Schutz
S T A R R busby (they/she/he/we – all pronouns said with respect) is a Black experimental artist who sings, acts, composes, educates, and is committed to the liberation of all people. A recent recipient of a NYSCA grant, S T A R R leads a music project under their name which will release a debut project in 2026. She is also the lead singer of dance&b band People’s Champs (www.peopleschampsnyc.com) which released their latest project, Show Up, in the Fall of 2023. S T A R R has also supported and collaborated with artists such as Gorillaz, Esperanza Spalding, Son Lux, X Ambassadors, Kimbra, Alice Smith, and Quelle Chris. Selected credits: Between Wave and Water (Composer and “Ghost”, Alethea Pace, The Metropolitan Museum of Art); If You Unfolded Us (Sable Elyse Smith, MoMA); (pray) (Ars Nova and National Black Theatre, A Singer, Composer, and Music Director) *Lucille Lortel Award Winner and NYT Critic’s Pick; The Beautiful Lady (La Mama, Boris) *NYT Critic’s Pick; On Sugarland (NYTW, co-composer) *Obie Award Winner; Octet (Signature Theatre, Paula) *Drama Desk Award Winner. All music available via Bandcamp and all streaming services. Love, gratitude and ashé to my blessed honorable ancestors, especially MME. www.https://linktr.ee/S_T_A_R_R
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.
Recognition – Reinventing Memory Through Sound
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
photo by Chris Bradley
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
Fausto Romitelli Professor Bad Trip, performed by Talea Ensemble
Recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Talea Ensemble has premiered over 50 commissions of major new works since it was founded in 2008, including bold and inventive productions combining music and other genres. In addition to a robust NYC season and appearances at festivals around the world, Talea supports early-career composers through US school residencies, a commissioning program, and a composer recording workshop.
Photo by Drew Bordeaux
Gérard Grisey Le Noir de l’Étoile, performed by Talujon
Described by The New York Times as possessing an “edgy, unflagging energy”, Talujon has committed itself to the growth of contemporary percussion music through diverse performance, commissioning, educational, and outreach activities. Talujon is composed of percussionists Ian Antonio, Caitlin Cawley, David Cossin, Matthew Gold, Tom Kolor, Michael Lipsey, and Matt Ward.
Photo by Erika Kapin
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. For Long Play, Tashi will be joined by Julia Holter!
photo by Dicky Bahto
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
Lowrey Berkshire organ generously donated by the MUSEUM of MUSIC TECHNOLOGY, powered by EMEAPP (Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project). emeapp.org
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.
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.
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 and the Japan Foundation.
photo by Chloe Fabre
Underground System is a shape-shifting force in New York City’s dance music scene, fusing afrobeat, punk, and disco into a sound that’s as unpredictable as it is infectious. Their 2018 debut LP, ‘What Are You’, earned cult status, praised for its “David Byrne meets Soulwax” energy and propelling them onto global stages. A whirlwind 2019 European tour saw them electrify crowds at festivals like Eurockéennes and Fusion, cementing their reputation for kinetic live performances. Now, with their recent EP’s and the release of their two latest singles, ‘Heads Of State’ and ‘Devotion’, they’re charging full-speed toward a sophomore album and more tour dates.
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.
Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
In this EPIC performance, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere 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 is performed by an All-Star cast including Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt (sitar), Valentina Magaletti (drums), Nicole Mitchell (flute), Suphala (tabla), Michael Harrison (keys), and Clara Warnaar (percussion).
photo by Louise Mason
3-Day Pass: $235 | SUPPORTER Pass: $350 | Single day pass: $95
(plus fees)
Single ticket for Henry Threadgill/Peter Evans at Roulette: $50
A 3-Day Festival Pass includes Terry Riley 90th Birthday Tribute with Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and 50+ concerts during the Long Play weekend.
A Long Play SUPPORTER PASS includes all of that PLUS
Supporter Passes also FULLY subsidize the purchase of one LONG PLAY 2025 day-pass for persons unable to pay for the cost of a full priced ticket.
Single-day passes for Saturday and Sunday are also available.
MAX passes are SOLD OUT.
It’s important to us that cost is not an ultimate barrier to new musical experiences. If you feel you are in need of a discount, or if you are a student, please drop us a line at: [email protected].
Bang on a Can presents the 4th year of Long Play, a three-day destination music festival, presented from Friday, May 2 through Sunday, May 4, 2025. Featuring 50+ concerts, Long Play also showcases a dense network of inventive music venues in Brooklyn – with performances at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Roulette, Pioneer Works, Public Records, BRIC, The Space at Irondale, the Church of St Luke and St Matthew, ISSUE Project Room, and Fort Greene Park!
The festival includes a 90th birthday spotlight-celebration of Terry Riley with 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 special guests Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell, Suphala, and more.
Some featured concerts in the 2025 lineup include the world premiere of Henry Threadgill’s Listen Ship; Tim Hecker; Kim Gordon, Anthony Braxton’s Composition No. 19 (For 100 Tubas), Moritz Von Oswald (2 concerts!), Ensemble Signal playing David Lang and Julia Wolfe; Tomeka Reid Quartet; Nico Muhly’s The Street; Valentina Magaletti; Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan aka Ringdown; Mary Halvorson + Bill Frisell duo; Australia’s Ensemble Offspring playing a world premiere by composer Kate Moore; and much more.
Of Long Play 2025, Bang on a Can co-founders, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon say:
All we need is music, sweet music
There’ll be music everywhere
That is not just a quote from Martha and the Vandellas – it’s the truth!
There will be music everywhere,
and we will be dancing in the street
at LONG PLAY 2025.
COME JOIN US FOR OVER 50 CONCERTS in 10 VENUES,
ACROSS 3 DAYS,
MAY 2 to 4, in BROOKLYN.
Now more than ever, we need music that can reach out to us, bring us all together. Audacious courageous music that brings light into the world.
Callin’ out around the world
Are you ready for a brand new beat?
Come join us for this spectacular gathering of musical creators
in Brooklyn
this spring
at LONG PLAY 2025.
p.s. lyrics by Songwriters: Ivy Hunter / Marvin Gaye / William Stevenson
Dancing In The Street lyrics © Stone Agate Music, Nmg Music, Mgiii Music, Fcg Music, Jobete Music Co Inc, Concord Road
Fueled by more than three decades of Bang on a Can projects, including Marathon concerts, LOUD Weekend at MASS MoCA, countless world tours and staged productions, Long Play is a Supercharged Musical Ride through Right Now – for musicians and audiences alike.
LONG PLAY is particularly grateful for the generous lead support from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Amphion Foundation, AvanToyko, Bruce and Terry Malmer, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Herb Leventer, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jane Stewart, Japan Foundation, Kettering Family Foundation, Stanley Greenberg, and ASCAP. This program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Additional support provided by Qobuz
For information on sponsorship opportunities for the 2025 Long Play Festival, please contact Bang on a Can’s Executive Director, Kenny Savelson, [email protected]. Sponsors support artist fees, production costs, and promotions for over fifty concerts at eight venues throughout Brooklyn. Bang on a Can is a 501-C3 charitable organization, all donations are tax deductible. All sponsors will be properly credited for their support.
Bang on a Can’s programs are made possible with generous lead support from: Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Alan Baker and Serena Lourie, Amphion Foundation, Art Music Denmark, ASCAP and ASCAP Foundation, Atlantic Records, Daniel Baldini, Jeffrey Bishop, William Bragin, The Cheswatyr Foundation, Paula Cooper, City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Liz Diller, Valerie Dillon and Daniel Lewis, Peter Faber, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Trust, Carol Golden, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jaffe Family Foundation, Jane Lombard, Japan Foundation, Joe Holt Charitable Trust, The Kettering Family Foundation, Alan Kifferstein & Joan Finkelstein, Richard Kuczknowski, Michael Kushner, Dave Lake, Leslie Lassiter, Herb Leventer, George Lewis, Raulee Marcus, MASS MoCA, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Jeremy Mindich & Amy Smith, Elizabeth Murrell & Gary Haney, National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, New York State Council on the Arts, Charles Read, Robert Black Foundation, Joe Serling, Justus & Elizabeth Schlichting, Matthew Sirovich & Meredith Elson, Maria & Robert A. Skirnick, Jane Stewart, Qobuz, Sandra Tait and Hal Foster, David Tochen & Mary Beth Schiffman, Williamson Foundation for Music, and Wolfensohn Family Foundation.
Long Play logo by Denise Burt; creative direction by Greg Simpson at Ephemera Design; website by Square Candy.
3-day pass
For Friday night performances, your name will be on a list at the door of the venues (Pioneer Works, Roulette, Public Records). So please head straight to your show of choice on Friday night and give them your name to enter. There is no central festival hub on Friday. [Not all Friday night venues have the capacity to distribute our 3-day festival wristbands, so if you are not issued a wristband on Friday night, simply enjoy shows Friday night via the door list, and then pick up your wristband from our festival hub at BRIC on Saturday. see below.]
Saturday and Sunday passes
Wristband distribution Saturday and Sunday will be at our festival hub in the BRIC lobby, so please stop by there before heading to the performances.* The festival hub at BRIC will be operating at the following times:
Saturday
11:30am – 10:30pm
Sunday
11:00am – 7:00pm
BRIC Arts Media
647 Fulton Street Brooklyn, NY 11217
(entrance is on Rockwell Place)
*you do not need a wristband to attend the Saturday 12:00pm FREE performance at Ft Greene park (Anthony Braxton). So you can get your wristband either before or after that show.
The 3-day and Saturday pass includes all of the festival performances EXCEPT the Saturday 8pm Max Richter performance at the BAM Opera House. That performance requires a separate ticket (MAX Pass) and is sold out.
There are a few options for Supporter pass pick up, depending on what event you are attending first. Supporter pass holders will be receiving email correspondence from Theodora Bocanegra Lang with all of the pick up info. And/or please email [email protected] with any questions.
Supporter Passes also fully subsidize the purchase of one Long Play 2025 day-pass for persons unable to pay for the cost of a full priced ticket.
A Long Play MAX PASS is a very limited supply ticket tier that includes all the benefits of the Supporter Pass (above) PLUS:
Max Passes also fully subsidize the purchase of one Long Play 2025 day-pass for persons unable to pay for the cost of a full priced ticket.
NOTE – MAX Passes are now SOLD OUT
Passes for Saturday and Sunday are available via our Eventbrite page!
Long Play shows are all first come, first served, so we recommend that you arrive early! If a show reaches capacity, audience will form a line, followed by “one out, one in.”
Most shows are only accessible with a festival pass (3 day or single day). However, some venues will be selling single tickets:
The shows at Ft Greene Park, BRIC Stoop and the BAMCafe will be FREE so you can certainly drop in on those shows!
It depends on the venue or show – some are fully seated and others are standing room only. However, we will make every effort to provide a seat for anyone needing one at any Long Play performance.
The Max Pass will include an assigned seat in the BAM opera house for the Max Richter performance.
Long Play takes place at multiple venues around Downtown Brooklyn, including BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Roulette, Pioneer Works, Public Records, BRIC, The Space at Irondale, the Church of St Luke and St Matthew, ISSUE Project Room, South Oxford Space, and Fort Greene Park.
Maps will be available online prior to the festival and hard copies will be available at all venues.
Your kids are weird, and also amazing! But generally, yes. Most shows welcome all ages. Some Long Play venues are clubs that are 21+, but will allow you to bring in a minor if accompanied by an adult.
As a mission based institution, it’s important to us that no person be unable to attend due to cost. If you feel you are in need of a subsidized ticket, please drop us a line at [email protected]. Subsidized tickets are made possible thanks to our Supporter Pass buyers. Thank you!
Also, the festival features FREE shows at the BRIC Stoop and the BAMCafe, that are available for EVERYONE! More free shows to be announced.
Yes, we have limited volunteer positions available, and we are always grateful for some extra hands! If you are interested in getting involved, please write us at: [email protected]. Please include whether you a) live in NYC and are available to help in the weeks preceding the festival, or b) are just in town to help for the festival weekend.
Write to us at [email protected].
