Cecilia Lopez premieres new compositions written for a fresh quartet of exceptional long-time and recent collaborators. Together, the quartet explores the boundary between acoustic and electronic sound. Through live amplification and processing, instrumental timbres are altered, twisted, and blended into vivid aural hallucinations where individual voices lose themselves in a collective network of sound.
Ingrid Laubrock saxophones
Trevor Dunn double bass
Dan Peck tuba
Cecilia Lopez composition, electronics, and processing
Opening the night is Melissa Almaguer with a solo set of tap dance and percussion. Her work explores the layered nature of listening and the ways sound shapes our experience of place and time. Beginning with tap dance and expanding into gongs, seed percussion, field recordings, resonant objects, and electronics, Almaguer builds evolving sonic environments where movement, texture, and rhythm become forms of storytelling through improvisation.
“One of the most compelling percussionists to hit the New York scene in recent years isn’t found onstage behind a drum kit, set of congas or any instrument played with sticks or hands: Melissa Almaguer is a tap-dancer, whose performances recall Whitney Balliett’s characterization of legendary jazz dancer Baby Laurence that he was “more a drummer than a dancer.” – Hank Shteamer JGI New York
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
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Cecilia Lopez is a composer, musician and multimedia artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina currently based in New York. She works across the media of performance, sound, installation, and the creation of sound devices and systems. Her work has been performed and exhibited at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (AR), Center for Contemporary Arts (Vilnius, Lithuania), Roulette Intermedium, Issue Project Room, Ostrava Days Festival 2011 (Ostrava, Czech Republic), MATA Festival 2012, among others. Grants and awards include a New York State Council for the Arts Individual project grant sponsored by Harvestworks, the Media Arts Grant (MAAF) for Individual Artists from the New York State Council for the Arts in partnership with Wave Farm, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the Jerome Foundation and Roulette Intermedium Commission and the MacCracken Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University. In 2019, Lopez curated the intermedia festival Folly Systems co-produced by Roulette Intermedium and Outpost Artists Resources that featured 11 international artists. Past and current collaborators include Ingrid Laubrock, Zeena Parkins, Carmen Baliero, Aki Onda, John Driscoll, Carrie Schneider and Lars Laumann among others. She holds an MFA in Music/Sound from The Milton Avery School of the Arts Bard College and an MA in composition from Wesleyan University. She is currently a PhD Candidate in composition at the GSAS at NYU University.
Ingrid Laubrock Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named a “true visionary” by pianist and The Kennedy Center’s Artistic Director Jason Moran, and a“fully committed saxophonist and visionary” by The New Yorker. Her composition Vogelfreiwas nominated “one of the best 25 Classical tracks of 2018” by The New York Times. Laubrock has performed with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jason Moran, Kris Davis, Nels Cline, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Mary Halvorson, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, Dave Douglas, Wet Ink, and many others. Laubrock has composed for ensembles ranging from solo to chamber orchestra. Awards include the 2025 German Jazz Prize, Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation, BBC Jazz Prize for Innovation, SWR German Radio Jazz Prize, and German Record Critics Quarterly Award. She won the ‘Downbeat Annual Critics Poll”as Rising Star Soprano Saxophonist (2015) and Tenor Saxophonist (2018) as well as Rising Star Composer and Large Ensemble (2025). Ingrid Laubrock is part-time faculty at Columbia University and The New School. She holds an MFA in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Trevor Dunn was born in 1968 behind the Redwood Curtain in Eureka, CA. His first instrument was the clarinet and he began to focus on the electric bass at 13. Four years later he co-founded the avant-rock band Mr. Bungle. In 1990, he received a BA in music from Humboldt State where he performed Koussevitsky’s Concerto for Double Bass with the HSO. In 2001, he was commissioned by the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center to write Dépaysemant for prepared solo contrabass performed later that year at Merkin Hall, Lincoln Center, NYC. Dunn has lived in Brooklyn, NY since 2000 and can be heard on over 150 recordings including original film music Four Films (Tzadik), his rock band MadLove (Ipecac), and a collection of chamber music, Nocturnes (Tzadik), featuring a string quartet and solo piano pieces. He can be heard with John Zorn, Endangered Blood, Nels Cline Singers, Tomahawk, Kris Davis, Dan Weiss, and The Melvins with whom in 2012 he toured all 50 States in 50 days. During the pandemic Dunn founded an independent record label Riverworm Records and released his project SpermChurch, a duo with Dutch-Indonesian electronic musician Sannety. His third trio-convulsant record Sèances (Pyroclastic), amended with a chamber quartet, was released in 2022. Other recent releases include more film music, KingDunn (acoustic duo with Buzz Osborne from the Melvins), Ahleuchatistas and Titan To Tachyons.
Dan Peck is a tuba player based in NYC. His tuba, bass, and percussion trio The Gate, with Tom Blancarte and Brian Osborne, has recorded ten albums and toured Europe three times. Earth Tongues is a trumpet, tuba, and percussion trio with Joe Moffett and Carlo Costa that has recorded five albums and toured domestically. Past collaborators include Anthony Braxton, Ingrid Laubrock, Premature Burial (a trio with Peter Evans and Matt Nelson) and Blood of the Stars (duo with violinist Erica Dicker), as well as multiple appearances on the Clean Feed, Firehouse 12 and ugEXPLODE record labels. Dan releases his music and other friends’ stuff on his label Tubapede Records.
Melissa Almaguer is a Mexico-born, New York City–based multidisciplinary artist whose primary instrument is tap dance. Her practice explores the relationship between movement, sound, and perception, drawing from surrealism, natural soundscapes, and the layered textures of everyday listening. Expanding tap through gongs, drums, seed percussion, resonant objects, and field recordings, she creates immersive sonic environments where rhythm, texture, and movement continuously shape one another. Almaguer has collaborated with artists including Moor Mother, William Parker, Joel Ross, David Virelles, Patricia Brennan, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, as well as tap artists Dormeshia, Derick K. Grant, Jason Samuels Smith, Michela Marino Lerman, and Jumaane Taylor. A recipient of the 2025 Next Jazz Legacy, 2024 M³ Mutual Mentorship for Musicians, and 2023 This Is A Movement: Collective Imagining, her work has been presented at venues including Lincoln Center, The Joyce Theater, National Sawdust, Joe’s Pub, and The Jazz Gallery.
