A double bill of two solo sets incorporating improvisation: saxophonist Caroline Davis, on saxophone and electronics, and a completely improvised performance by pianist Matt Mitchell.
Caroline Davis performs solo, taking a creative approach to the nexus between saxophone and electronics. Pieces for Caroline‘s performance will include the following selections and will be decided upon spontaneously, given the atmosphere of the room and the people present. The interactive technology used in this performance includes patches developed for the Organelle by Caroline and others (the technobear, shreeswifty, critterandguitari, tony j morton, nobuyasu sakonda, soxsa, varicela, nicky-system, samesimilar, and chrisk in Pure Data) as well as a Boss loop station with mixer capabilities. All the titles and songs are in reverence to bell hooks:
Love as a practice of freedom
Radical openness
Maintenance of commitment
Accept when
Belief in one’s capacity to transform
What it means to listen
Eliminating elimination
Matt Mitchell opens the evening. Following the Obliquity Records releases of his critically lauded and completely improvised solo piano albums Illimitable and Sacrosanctity, Mitchell will play a completely improvised, spontaneous performance on solo piano.
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Caroline Davis is a Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer, and activist, whose work is driven by a desire for connection and a belief in music’s capacity to expand listeners’ ears, minds, and hearts. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition, she is the recipient of the DownBeat Critics Poll Alto Saxophone Rising Star Award, as well as fellowships from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her residencies include MacDowell, The Jazz Gallery, Civitella, and the Rockefeller Estate, and she has served as a mentor for New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy program.
Davis’s work spans a wide range of creative contexts, rooted in improvisation and social inquiry. She has released eight albums as a leader and collaborated with artists such as Allison Miller, Lee Konitz, John Zorn, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Miles Okazaki, Nicole Mitchell, Rajna Swaminathan, and Matt Mitchell. Her most recent release, Portals, explores themes of grief and memory, and she is also a contributor to Terri Lyne Carrington’s New Standards, a landmark collection of jazz compositions by female-identifying composers.
In addition to her work as a performer and composer, Davis is a dedicated educator, teaching courses on gender in jazz at The New School and maintaining a private studio at the Manhattan School of Music. Her artistic practice is deeply intertwined with advocacy, including work for gender equity through This Is A Movement, and for current and formerly incarcerated individuals through initiatives such as Justice for Keith LaMar, Freer Records, Keys Beats Bars, and Creative Beyond Incarceration.
Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer whose creative practice exists in a nexus between myriad strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music. He has released several forward-thinking, critically acclaimed, and influential albums as a leader on Pi Recordings, Screwgun Records, and Out of Your Head Records, and together with Kate Gentile he runs Obliquity Records.
In addition to co-leading Snark Horse with Kate Gentile, he also fronts several ensembles featuring many of the foremost improvisers on the scene, including Kim Cass, Kate Gentile, Jon Irabagon, Miles Okazaki, Mariel Roberts, Sara Schoenbeck, Sara Serpa, Andrew Smiley, Brandon Seabrook, Ches Smith, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss, and Miguel Zenon.
He is a member of several significant and acclaimed creative music ensembles, including those led by Dan Weiss, Miles Okazaki, Ches Smith, Kate Gentile, Anna Webber, Jon Irabagon, Ralph Alessi, and Yuhan Su. He has a longstanding association with Tim Berne, and he plays and has played extensively in the ensembles of many major figures in improvised music, including Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, David Binney, John Hollenbeck, Miguel Zenon, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Linda May Han Oh, Jonathan Finlayson, Mario Pavone, and Darius Jones.
As an educator, he has taught improvisation, composition, and piano at the Siena Summer Jazz Workshop, NYU, the School for Improvisational Music, and the New School. He has also received several awards and fellowships, including the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Doris Duke Impact Award, and multiple Shifting Foundation grants.
