Nina Guo (voice) & Joe Houston (piano) perform songs by Charles Ives, Matthew Shlomowitz, Kaija Saariaho, and Rishin Singh.

Program: 

Charles Ives, Songs (selection)

Matthew Shlomowitz, Four Songs (UA) and two songs from Songs about words and the pleasure of misery

Rishin Singh, Love at the Border (UA)

Kaija Saariaho, Saarikoski-laulut

Sawt Out presents its new album Sawt Out: Fake Live in America, in the first of two episodes, the first unplugged and the second plugged.

Burkhard Beins (analog synths, samples, walkie talkies), Mazen Kerbaj (crackle synth, trumpet, toys, radio) & Michael Vorfeld (light bulbs, electric switching devices)

Over its first six years, the trio Sawt Out focused entirely on their unusual acoustic instrumentation, consisting of trumpet and two sets of percussion. They then invented an electro-acoustic version of the group as their second musical leg. Whether acoustic or electronic, Sawt Out creates bewildering sound worlds rich in detail and tight musical interaction.

Gruppo di Improvvisazione Giallo

Hanno Leichtmann (electronics, percussion), Magda Mayas (piano, clavinet), Sara Persico (voice, electronics) & Valerio Tricoli (Revox B77)

Gruppo di Improvvisazione Giallo is a new project initiated by Hanno Leichtmann and is influenced by the musician and sound artist’s love for the soundtracks of the Italian crime and thriller movie genre of the late 1960s and 1970s commonly known as "giallo" (yellow), which was named after the dominant color of the covers of the pulp novels that inspired it. 

The project pays homage to them and the legacy of the composer-performer collective Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza and one of its leading figures, Ennio Morricone, who also composed dozens of giallo scores. 

Kathryn Williams (flutes) performs two sets of works taken from Coming Up for Air, a collection of over 150 works limited to a single breath, as well as new works by Christopher Fox and Jobina Tinnemans. She is joined by Ed Cooper, performing The Heart Is an Empty Membrane.

Program:

• Coming Up for Air (set 1)

Mark Dyer, Memento for Kathryn (and being able to hold that forever) for flute and tape

John Webb, One breath bop for flute and inflatable hammer

Megan Grace Beugger, Asthmatic Inhalation and Exhalation for flute 

Cecilia Muylaert: Puzzle of a Breath for flute (UA)

Jenny Jackson, Expel for flute

Eleanor Cully Boehringer, Snow Geese for speech (UA)

• Ed Cooper, The Heart Is an Empty Membrane for heartbeat, field recordings, poetry, live electronics (performed by Ed Cooper)

• Christopher Fox, Bernauer Straße for diffusion

• Christopher Fox, Free Diver for amplified bass flute (UA)

• Jobina Tinnemans, Panoramic Book IX: Fieldnotes for alto flute (UA)

• Coming Up for Air (set 2)

Robin Haigh, ARPIL for alto flute and piccolo

Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh + Kathryn Williams, PIXERCISE for piccolo

Oskar Bałdyga, Scherzo for Piccolo

Ed Cooper, For Kathryn Williams: Ultramarine #504 for flute and acrylic paint on canvas 

Lailah Arafah, Passive Living for flute

Tilman Kanitz (cello) & Jared Redmond (piano) perform solo and duo works by Morton Feldman.

Program: 

Piano Piece (1964), realisation 1 

Durations 2 for Cello and Piano (1960), realisation 1

Projection 1 for Cello (1950), realisation 1 

Intersection 2 for Piano (1951) 

Projection 1 for Cello (1950), realisation 2 

Intersection 3 for Piano (1953), realisation 1 

Intersection 4 for Cello (1953), realisation 1 

Intersection 3 for Piano (1953), realisation 2 

Intersection 4 for Cello (1953), realisation 2 

Piano Piece (1964), realisation 2 

Durations 2 for Cello and Piano, realisation 2

All works by Morton Feldman

Tom Jacques & Felipe Waller, duo for self-made instruments and DC motors

Jacques and Waller present an improvised performance using recently built, rotation-based instruments. In this sonic exploration, constantly spinning gears open and close physical apertures, acting as dynamic filters and sound enhancers. Controlled via MIDI, the rotation speeds become part of the improvisation—blurring the lines between invention and performance in a continuous, evolving musical dialogue.

Jacob Greenberg & Viola Yip, duo for harmonium and air-based electronics.

Greenberg & Yip devise a counterpoint loop of jointly originated air sounds, with a nuanced exchange of the acoustic harmonium bellows and a newly-developed instrument that allows electronics to emerge from inflatables and human body movements.

Aspen Edities label night

Poor Isa 

Frederik Leroux (banjo, woodblocks, flute) & Ruben Machtelinckx (banjo, woodblocks)

Fredrik Rasten, Strands of lunar light (Aspen Edities 2025) for electric and acoustic guitars, with Ruben Machtelinckx

Frederik Leroux, this here empty room (Aspen Edities 2025) for solo guitar

Poor Isa, the duo of Ruben Machtelinckx and Frederik Leroux, has a remarkable instrumentation: the combination of prepared banjo and woodblocks expresses a surging condition in which silence and sound are equivalent. From improvisations, elements are magnified, isolated or developed further until rippling compositions arise in which subtle and hardly audible sounds come to the surface. In spring 2019, Poor Isa released Let’s Drink The Sea And Dance (Aspen Edities) followed by Dissolution of the Other in 2023. 

Fredrik Rasten's Strands of lunar light is an otherworldly exploration of spectral microtonality for multiple guitars, all played by Rasten and Ruben Machtelinckx. In the context of his other compositions, Strands of lunar light explores a new territory comprising a dense, spectral harmony derived from a complete segment of a harmonic series. The work is part of Rasten’s continuing exploration of just intonation realized on guitars, building on his earlier released works Six Moving Guitars, Svevning and Lineaments. 

Fredrik Leroux's this here empty room is a collection of miniature compositions for solo acoustic guitar. It is intimate, quiet, small and slow. The pieces can almost be seen. The playing with light and darkness, opaqueness and translucency, makes the album a space. 

andPlay

Maya Bennardo (violin) and Hannah Levinson (viola) 

andPlay perform recent works by Magnus Granberg and Angharad Davies that explore texture, ritual, and timbral extremes. 

Program:

Magnus Granberg, The Willow Bends and So Do I (2025)

Angharad Davies, Desire Lines (2025) (German premiere)

The Unsmart Duo  

Jasmine Guffond (electronics) & Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet)

Droszkhi

Torben Tilly (electronics)

In 2003 Jasmine Guffond and Torben Tilly moved to Berlin after touring and recording with their duo Minit for many years. There they were invited to perform at Kai Fagaschinski's concert series Raumschiff Zitrone. In casual conversation, the band name "The International Nothing" came up, which Kai later used for his clarinet duo with Michael Thieke. After some years in Berlin, Torben moved back to New Zealand, working on solo projects as Droszkhi, while Jasmine stayed and kept busy as a solo artist. Last year, Jasmine and Kai started working as The Unsmart Duo, a name inspired by their continued use of old-school dumb phones. They were commissioned by Sonda Festival (CZ) for a duo composition and recorded an album immediately after. 

Salomé Voegelin presents Cassette Album (Flaming Pines 2025), featuring performances by Heather Frasch (kinetic objects & live electronics), super inter (loops and feedback, radio receivers and samplers), and Pisitakun (khaen). 

Cassette Album is a compilation of sonic responses to tape scores by the writer and artist Salomé Voegelin. It features work by eight artists—Pisitakun, super inter, Heather Frasch, Magda Drozd, Mariam Rezaei, Samson Young, Hannah Silva and Cody Yantis—who each have composed works in response to individual tape scores by Voegelin.

Making Waves #12 

The Noise of Conscience: Music, Art and Activism

Dror Feiler will present selected excerpts from his compositions and art installations, interwoven with reflections on how political resistance, sonic intensity, and ethical commitment shape his creative process, followed by a discussion with Cedrik Fermont.

Dror Feiler, born in Tel Aviv in 1951 and later moving to Sweden, is an artist and activist whose work is deeply rooted in political conviction. In 1970, he refused to serve in the Israeli military in the occupied territories, a decision that marked the beginning of his lifelong opposition to the occupation. Over the years, he became a prominent voice in the Jewish peace movement, serving as chairman of both Jews for Israeli–Palestinian Peace in Sweden and European Jews for a Just Peace. His activism has included direct action, such as his participation in the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, where he was injured and arrested by Israeli forces.

Feiler’s music and art are known for being bold, challenging, and politically charged. His compositions—like Halat Hisar, Tikkun Olam, and Epexegesis—mix noise, free jazz, and experimental sound to reflect themes of conflict, injustice, and resistance. His controversial installation Snow White and the Madness of Truth sparked international debate for its commentary on violence and martyrdom. Rather than aiming to comfort or entertain, Feiler’s work pushes audiences to confront difficult questions and blurs the line between artistic expression and political protest.

Cedrik Fermont is a Berlin-based Belgian-Congolese composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, radio host, concert organiser, independent researcher and label manager (at Syrphe) who operates in the field of noise, electronic, electroacoustic, sound art, and experimental music since 1989. He has collaborated with dozens musicians and vocal artists around the world, joining networks of academic and independent artists and activists. He occasionally composes music for sound installations, theater, and choreographies.

Dror Feiler appears with kind support from the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. 

Prime Time #8

Harmonic Space Orchestra presents new works by Cenk Ergün and Fredrik Rasten as well as an ongoing joint composition by members of the ensemble.

Program:

• Cenk Ergün, Compos Mentis, for quarter-tone bass flute and double bass, with shadowing ensemble

• Thomas Nicholson, Rebecca Lane, Jonathan Heilbron, M.O. Abbott & Weston Olencki, A Sequence of Chords (January/February/March/April/May/June) 

• Fredrik Rasten, Alloy (version for two violas, cello & contrabass)

M.O. Abbott (trombone), Judith Hamann (cello), Jonathan Heilbron (contrabass), Catherine Lamb (viola), Rebecca Lane (microtonal flutes), Thomas Nicholson (viola), Michiko Ogawa (clarinets), Weston Olencki (trombone), Fredrik Rasten (guitars) and Marc Sabat (violin)

The Magic I.D.  

Michael Thieke (clarinet), Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet), Christof Kurzmann (vocals, computer (G3 & Lloopp) & Margareth Kammerer (vocals, guitar)

The Magic I.D. is a quartet formed in summer 2005 to explore the juncture of song forms with abstract music. The musicians expand song forms through the prism of experimental sensibilities and mesh the two remarkably fluidly. Releases to date are I’m So Awake / Sleepless I Feel (Staubgold 2011) and Till My Breath Gives Out (Erstwhile Records 2008).

Ullén–Song–Kim–Lee

Lisa Ullén (piano), Junyoung Song (drums), Eunyoung Kim (piano) & Okkyung Lee (cello)

Ullén–Song–Kim–Lee is a new ensemble organized by Okkyung Lee that will perform in shifting configurations over the course of the evening.

Peter Zummo (trombone) & Bex Burch (percussion)

Composer/trombonist Peter Zummo’s inimitable tone and “minimalism and a whole lot more” approach has its roots in a storied era of NYC history via his deep association with Arthur Russell, Trisha Brown, Nancy Graves, and a veritable who’s who of New York Avant-garde history. 

Bex Burch is an instrument maker and improviser whose work emphasizes space, repetition, and aspects of chaos. Her critically acclaimed 2023 solo album There is only love and fear was released via Chicago’s International Anthem. She runs the label Vula Viel Records, the domestic music event Kantine Musik, and enjoys hitting things with sticks.

Zummo and Burch have worked together since 2019, singing beautifully (in octaves) on the Vula Viel What's Not Enough About That record and on Peter's $64,000 Litmus Test project.