Two new groups make their NYC debut: Squanderers is the glowing new trio of guitarists Wendy Eisenberg and David Grubbs alongside multi-instrumentalist and legendary producer Kramer, following a new ensemble joining together two duets: Lea Bertucci and Ben Vida with Cleek Schrey and Henry Fraser.

Squanderers 
Wendy Eisenberg guitar
David Grubbs guitar
Kramer bass

Lea Bertucci voice, saxophone, electronics
Henry Fraser double bass
Cleek Schrey violin
Ben Vida voice, accordion, electronics

Squanderers first sprung into action as the duo of Kramer and Grubbs with the single Congress of Poodles b/w Lendrick Muir Bible Study Weekend, part of Kramer’s 2023 Shimmy-Disc box set Rings of Saturn. Squanderers now enter the arena of live performance with the addition of bona-fide guitar slayer Eisenberg, a dream of a foil to Grubbs’s grubbslike guitarisms, setting the scene for Kramer to follow his musical divining rod. Divining urges not dirges. Squanderers’s debut LP If a Body Meet a Body appeared on Shimmy-Disc in November 2024, and the group will perform at the 2025 Big Ears festival.

In Grubbs’s book-length poem The Voice in the Headphones, “Squanderer” is the nickname that most deeply troubles of the book’s unnamed protagonist: “Hang your head, Squanderer. You’ll never darken the doorway of Studio A.” Will this trio of inveterate Squanderers redeem themselves?

Ben Vida, Lea Bertucci, Cleek Shrey, Henry Fraser is a new collaboration between four composer-performers. The ensemble investigates structural and dramatic aspects of sound and performance using amplified woodwind and stringed instruments, electronics, voice, and tape. Drawing on their individual practices as improvisers and composers, the quartet explores conceptual play alongside visceral interiority through deconstructed language and instrumental gesture. They embrace theater, absurdity, and the sublime.