National Sawdust Announces Fall 2022 Season Presenting Groundbreaking Artists at Various Stages in Their Careers

National Sawdust has announced its Fall 2022 season, bringing musical and multidisciplinary artists from around the world to its state-of-the-art Williamsburg, Brooklyn home to share ambitious new explorations. The organization demonstrates its commitment to mentoring artists and fostering dynamic and timely collaborations, often in projects that entwine musicality and considerations of social justice. The works comprising the season emerge from an America and a world experiencing intersecting crises and urgent calls for change-and respond with themes of healing, metamorphosis, activism, and hope.

See "National Sawdust Fall 2022 Schedule" section below for a full list of programming and additional details.

The fall 2022 season brims with the results of generative relationships: between institution and artist, and collaborators working across genres and disciplines. Numerous performances spring from-or can can be traced back to-National Sawdust's multi-pronged approach to mentoring and supporting artists. In a centerpiece presentation this season, the acclaimed Ghanaian interdisciplinary artist JOJO ABOT, a former National Sawdust artist-in-residence, collaborates with five-time Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding on A God of Her Own Making. This experiential opera challenges preconceived notions of the form and immerses audiences in an inter-dimensional soundscape (using Meyer Sound spatial technologies available at National Sawdust) that channels the divine feminine energy when mind, body, and spirit unite (September 23 & 24). Emily Wells, another National Sawdust resident artist alumna, whose latest album Regards to the End "responds to historical crises with sprawling orchestral pop" (Pitchfork) as it looks to the AIDS crisis and the activism that arose from it to understand our moment of climate emergency and ignorance, brings this bold work into performance on September 29. The project is part of National Sawdust's Toulmin Fellows program with the Center for Ballet & The Arts at NYU.

On October 21, the organization presents a concert version of an opera from Niloufar Nourbakhsh, one of three winners of National Sawdust's 2019 Hildegard Commissions (a mentorship initiative highlighting outstanding women and other marginalized genders in the early stages of their careers). This work, We, the Innumerable, centers an Iranian woman fighting for the truth within a soul-crushing regime. A concert culminates National Sawdust's BluePrint Fellowship Class of 2022 program-a collaboration with The Juilliard School to inspire composition and music students and recent alumni to plan and execute a blueprint of their career dreams-introducing National Sawdust audiences to the next generation of musical visionaries (December 11).

Performances in the season amplify the social narratives contained within music, unleashing and exploring the often fraught underpinnings of genre that often further American histories of oppression, erasure, and appropriation-as well as resilience, love, and community. The "independent minded" (The New Yorker), Grammy-nominated PUBLIQuartet, in one of a series of evenings presented in collaboration with the Sphinx Organization, musically asks the question "what is American?" (likewise the title of their most recent album). They explore and interrogate the resonances between various genres, tracing them forward from the Black and Indigenous music that inspired Dvorak's "American" String Quartet (November 11). Choreographer and tap dancer Michela Marino Lerman and her band, Love Movement, make boundary-pushing work colliding original music, spirituals, jazz, and tap-performed on traditional and electronic tap boards. Inspired in part by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Levels of Love" speech, Lerman's Love Movement is, as she describes, a "journey through the levels of love one experiences throughout life, beginning with familial love, self-love and realization, protest, prayer, spiritual love, and finally romantic love." The performance, on November 18, will be accompanied by a discussion between Lerman and collaborator, Love Movement music director Russell Hall-both artists as social practitioners and activists-November 5, "Musicians as Activists."

Providing an experimentation-nurturing platform for artists at various moments in their careers is critical to National Sawdust's encapsulation of avant garde histories and futures. Visionary and virtuosic toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan has, across an accomplished career, continued to push music forward. At National Sawdust, she honors her late friend, the influential composer George Crumb, who "beguiled audiences with his own musical language, composing colorful and concise works that range in mood from peaceful to nightmarish...to startling effect" (The New York Times), in a performance that includes his work Metamorphoses Book II.

Whether building previously unheard sonic worlds with one instrument or many, performances make use of National Sawdust's simultaneous feeling of intimacy and vastness: its ability to bring audiences up close to massive, dynamic sound. Xavier Foley-in one of a series of evenings presented in collaboration with Sphinx Organization-performs as a solo artist on double bass, an instrument rarely experienced within this format, October 16. In an event presented by AdHoc, Ichiko Aoba will perform her "ambitious, dreamlike" (Pitchfork) seventh studio album, Windswept Adan, which uses lush instrumentation (Aoba plays guitar, piano, clarinet, accordion, and flute) to create a soundtrack to an imaginary film.

National Sawdust Programming Director Nicole Merritt said, "As we've all moved through this pandemic, through social unrest, we ask: how can this season contain important transformational moments we can experience together? Whether through JOJO ABOT and Esperanza Spalding's galactic spatial-sound journey or Michela Marimo Lerman's practice of love and hope as a discipline or Emily Wells's vision of this moment through the lens of the rich history of AIDS activism in our country, we see how music and interdisciplinary work can heal-how it might help lead us out of the ruins."

A testament to National Sawdust's engagement not only with compositional and musical innovation, but also its active role in generating discourse surrounding it, the archives of National Sawdust Log have been preserved at the Performing Arts Web Archive at the Library of Congress. Ideas Zone, a digital-live public engagement platform spearheaded by National Sawdust Poet-in-Residence and renowned Trinidadian American poet Lynne Procope, expands the organization's contributions to music journalism and discussion. Ideas Zone-which features written discourse, podcasts, films, master classes, playlists, and live conversations and performances with artists, thought leaders, and writers-continues in Fall 2022. Content will draw attention to the arts through a filter of human rights, access, participation, and equity.

National Sawdust Fall 2022 Schedule

Reuben James

September 17

Fast-emerging British singer, songwriter and pianist Reuben James' virtuoso jazz techniques and soulful, evocative voice have led him to be widely regarded as one of the most exciting and creatively assured artists to have emerged in recent years. Although perhaps best known for his ongoing collaborations with Sam Smith, which have included co-writing songs for Smith's 4 million-selling album The Thrill of It All, James has written for and performed with an array of international star acts including the likes of Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Tori Kelly, Little Mix, Disclosure and Liam Payne amongst many others.

Reuben's sophomore EP Slow Down landed to critical acclaim in 2020, with lead singles "My Line" and "So Cool" achieving radio plays across BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Introducing and Jazz FM. Reuben released his single "BBQ Energy" in late 2020 followed by the star-studded "Tunnel Vision" featuring Frida Touray, Daley with Tom Misch in early 2021. His most recent offering, "U Got Me" with Jaz Karis, was released in September 2021.

JOJO ABOT featuring Esperanza Spalding: A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING, a new immersive spatial sound performance

September 23-24

A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING is an immersive opera in which the human vessel serves as a primary instrument and conduit for sound as a healing pathway to the divine. Incorporating both old and new technologies, woman and machine come together in sacred co-creation.

2018 Artist-in-Residence and acclaimed interdisciplinary artist JOJO ABOT returns with the debut of this immersive and otherworldly experience, featuring musician and restorative arts devotee Esperanza Spalding. Created, directed, and composed by JOJO ABOT during a long season of uncertainty, separation, and global unrest, A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING builds on JOJO ABOT's exploration of spirituality, and incorporates spalding's lineages and practices of restorative music.

In A GOD OF HER OWN MAKING, JOJO ABOT-an ewe woman from Ghana, West Africa-references indigenous practices in which the feminine is a conduit for the divine holding space as a portal and point of intercession for all mankind.

For the first time ever, National Sawdust's Meyer Sound spatial sound system serves as a tool for inducing a state of expansive presence, awareness, and ascension while amplifying a call to (re)turn to an ancient self that is in unity with all of creation. In this one-of-a-kind performance, JOJO ABOT and spalding invite audiences to tap back into a deep love for nature and each other, to imagine and dare make manifest more harmonious, nourishing, and intentional futures.

Emily Wells

September 29

For her third appearance on the National Sawdust stage, composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells and her band (bassist Dandy McDowell, drummer Addie Vogt, and multi-instrumentalist Alec Spiegelman) will perform work from her 2022 album Regards to the End. A loving ode to and dialogue with AIDS activists of the past, Wells' latest album weaves a narrative of radical empathy and hope out of their resiliency. By crafting her orchestral pop around the question "What could we learn from the activists of the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the face of climate crisis?", Wells ties together the AIDS crisis, the climate emergency, and her own lived experience watching the world burn. As a 2022 Toulmin Fellow for The Center for Ballet and the Arts & National Sawdust, continued to explore these concepts through movement and projections. Wells will present part of this video work-crafted out of footage of AIDS protests, extreme climate events, and contemporary dance-during this performance, as well as songs from her latest album and her back catalog reinterpreted for a 4-piece band. Even under the weight of historical and current governmental denial and neglect, Wells refuses to give in to despair, singing in "Dress Rehearsal": "Where nothing is still, love happened here." Join National Sawdust as Emily Wells looks to the past to find a way forward in a burning world in this headlining performance.

Xavier Foley

October 16

Double bassist Xavier Foley has revitalized the conversation around the double bass and expanded its profile as a virtuosic instrument, daring to compose for and present the double bass as a solo instrument-a rarity in western classical music. As a composer, Foley pulls from a wide range of styles and influences, including Latin music, Irish folk tunes, and death metal. Foley's ability to bring together disparate sonic elements in novel compositions for the double bass has made him a sought-after recitalist and composer around the country. Don't miss Xavier Foley take the double bass to new heights.

Co-presented with the Sphinx Organization.

Jean-Michel Blais

October 18

Jean-Michel Blais is a pianist-composer-performer based in Montreal. Blais released his debut opus, Il, written after two years of daily improvisation, recorded with a Zoom H4n in his Mile-End apartment. It ranked among the Top 10 best albums in Time Magazine, which mentioned that "his music breathes, invites to take a moment and recognize there's still plenty of beauty left in the world." The album collected more than 50 million plays worldwide, ranked number one 14 times on classical Billboard (Canada) and appeared in the long list of the Polaris Music Prize.

In 2018, Blais released his sophomore album, Dans ma main. Suffering from Tourette syndrome, he was inspired by ambient and new age music his parents would play him as a child to alleviate his symptoms. The result was an album tinged with minimalism, samples, and electronics, which was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, and received the Libera Award for Best Classical Album.

In 2019, he released Matthias & Maxime, the soundtrack of the eponymous film directed by Xavier Dolan. Blais received an honorable gold record from the Cannes Soundtrack Award. In 2021, Blais unveiled "murmures," a new piece from an upcoming album titled aubades. For the first time, he wrote for chamber orchestra, affirming himself as an emerging composer.

Niloufar Nourbakhsh's We, The Innumerable

October 21

We, The Innumerable-an opera from Iranian composer and 2019 Hildegard winner Niloufar Nourbakhsh-tells the story of one Iranian woman's fight for the truth in the face of state violence and repression. Set against the backdrop of the 2009 Iranian Green Movement, this opera follows Roya and her husband Siavash after they become state targets for participating in nationwide protests of the presidential election result. After Siavash's murder, an imprisoned Roya must choose between parroting the state's lie about his death or telling the truth. With this piece, composer Nourbakhsh and librettist Lisa Flanagan integrate authentic Iranian instruments into the European-derived form of the opera, pushing the form beyond Western conventions. While deeply embedded in an Iranian context, We, The Innumerable tells the universal and timely story of a divided nation and the choices we make while battling injustice.

Co-presented with the Center for Contemporary Opera.

Timbalooloo Jazz for Kids with Oran Etkin & Special Guests

October 22 with Yacouba Sissoko

November 19 with Bobby Sanabria

December 10 with Vitor Gonçalves

An interactive concert series that celebrates music and diversity with special guests that will introduce children and families to the rich global culture in New York and beyond.

Timbalooloo is led by founder and internationally-renowned clarinetist Oran Etkin, and will introduce children to a new musical tradition each month with the help of a special guest. The Timbalooloo method brings instruments to life and encourages children to "talk" through music, activating children's imaginations and encouraging their self-expression. Designed to teach children complex musical concepts through age-appropriate games and stories, Timbalooloo makes music fun and educational.

For the first three shows of the season, Etkin and his instrument friend Clara Net will be joined by Malian Kora master Yacouba Sissoko on October 22nd, Nuyorican percussionist Bobby Sanabria on November 19th, and Brazilian accordionist and pianist Vitor Gonçalves on December 10th. Budding musicians are encouraged to sing, dance, and drum in the same room as world-famous performers.

Children ages 2 and up are invited to attend. For this performance, vaccines are recommended for children 4 years old and younger but are required for everyone ages 5 and up. All guests are required to wear N95, KF94, or KN95 masks for the duration of the show; child and adult masks will also be provided upon check-in. For more information about National Sawdust's COVID-19 policies, please click here.

October 22

Dance, drum and sing along to music from West Africa in this first concert in our monthly Timbalooloo series. Clarinetist and Timbalooloo founder Oran Etkin invites Malian Kora master Yacouba Sissoko as his first special guest! The Kora is a beautiful 21-string harp from West Africa that Yacouba learned to play from his grandfather in Mali. Yacouba comes from centuries of generations of Jali (Griot) musicians and storytellers, who hold a cherished role in their community, bringing people together through music and keeping the oral history alive.

November 19th

What is better than having your child learn to sing, drum, and dance to the music of Tito Puente and Dizzy Gillespie? Having a master of Afro-Latin music who actually played with Tito, Dizzy and other greats lead them along the journey of discovery! For this second concert in the monthly Timbalooloo series, clarinetist and Timbalooloo founder Oran Etkin invites seven-time Grammy-nominated percussionist Bobby Sanabria as his special guest as they take the children on a journey to Puerto Rico, Cuba, and beyond.

December 10

Get ready to dance the samba, play the agogo, and sing along to a sailor song as we take a musical journey to Brazil. For this third concert in the monthly Timbalooloo series, clarinetist and Timbalooloo founder Oran Etkin invites Brazilian accordionist and pianist Vitor Gonçalves as his special guest. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Vitor has played with legendary artists from Hermeto Pascoal to Maria Bethânia and combines a deep knowledge of the tradition with creativity and spontaneity!

AdHoc Presents: Ichiko Aoba

October 26

Rising Japanese singer and guitarist Ichiko Aoba performs her seventh studio album, Windswept Adan-a singer-songwriter album, a concept album, a piece of chamber music, and a contemporary orchestral work. It is heavily influenced by jazz, by folk, and by impressionistic classical music. It is a soundtrack to an imaginary film; it is an album that tells a story; it is a piece of fantasy science fiction set to music; it is a sonic voyage through the East China Sea.

"It is written as the soundtrack to a fictitious movie," says Ichiko. "It is a story about a girl who goes from the fictional Kirinaki Island - an island inhabited by a tribe of inbred families - to Adan Island. Adan has no language. The girl meets the creatures that live on that island and traces the roots of her life while gifting shells to the natives of Adan Island."

Where Ichiko's previous songs have been open to interpretation, she wants Windswept Adan to tell a very specific story. "We wanted the music to express things like the temperature flowing in the story, the girl's facial expression, and the smell of the sea breeze," she says. "It was like a piece of acting for me. I think I've become able to think more three-dimensionally about works and stages."

Nathan Schram with Special Guests Attacca Quartet, Becca Stevens, & Caroline Shaw

October 29

GRAMMY Award-winning composer and violist for Attacca Quartet Nathan Schram will premiere his new album NEARSIDED in this multimedia performance. Schram's latest album is a testament to the power of exploration and sees him eschew genre to test the possibilities of what can be created in the studio and on-stage. NEARSIDED wears its influences on its sleeve: mimicking Mahler's penchant for contrasting moods in his symphonic works to the electronica of Radiohead's Kid A and the moody realism of Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city. The result of these varied influences is an album that uses new music to explore a full range of emotions, from exultant joy to glowering darkness, by combining electronics and strings. Join Nathan Schram and his special guests-Attacca Quartet, Becca Stevens, Caroline Shaw, and more-for the world premiere of NEARSIDED in this album release show.

NEARSIDED is out July 29th via Better Company Records.

AdHoc Presents: Colin Stetson & Elori Saxl

November 3

Horn player Colin Stetson has developed an utterly unique voice as a soloist, principally on saxophones and clarinets, his intense technical prowess matched by his exhilarating and emotionally gripping skills as a songwriter. Stetson's astounding physical engagement with his instruments (chiefly bass and alto saxophones) produces emotionally rich and polyphonic compositions that transcend expectations of what solo horn playing can sound like. Stemming from that approach and aesthetic, he has been contributing regularly to the world of film, TV, and game scoring over the past decade, and has worked extensively, live and in studio, with a wide range of bands and musicians.

Elori Saxl is an American experimental electronic composer. Her debut album The Blue of Distance (released 2021 on Western Vinyl) received critical acclaim for its elegant combination of digitally-processed recordings of wind and water with the rich sounds of analog synthesizers and chamber orchestra. Half-written in the verdant Adirondack mountains of northern New York in a hot summer filled with love, ecstasy, and a feeling of promise, and half-written in the frozen Apostle Islands in Lake Superior in the dead of winter looking back at videos from the summer, The Blue of Distance effortlessly captures the gentle sorrows of nostalgia in an age of perpetual digital memory.

Ami Dang with Opener Roshni Samlal

November 10

South Asian-American vocalist, sitarist, composer, and producer Amrita "Ami" Kaur Dang's experimental ambient music references her upbringing as a first-generation Sikh-American in Baltimore, combining elements of North Indian classical music with noise, dance, and psych music. Dang broadens the palette of both contemporary electronic music and the traditional music of South Asia, drawing into focus the legacies of colonialism and extraction that have shaped and separated both fields. Dang's meditative and entrancing tonal landscapes challenge the binary of traditional/contemporary music and East/West sounds, asserting that South Asian sonics are a vital part of the future of music. Working in the same realm as Dang is local tabla player Roshni Samlal, who will perform an opening set that fuses Indian classical percussion with electronic and chamber music through a feminist lens. Dang's genre- transcending performance-which has led to tours with musicians like Beach House, black midi, and Grimes-promises to be a transformative experience for all listeners.

PUBLIQuartet: What is American

November 11

2018-2019 Artists-in-Residence PUBLIQuartet return for their fourth appearance on the National Sawdust stage, this time performing in full for the first time their latest album What is American. In their third album, the Grammy-nominated string quartet highlights our country's complex histories with the Black and Indigenous roots of contemporary, blues, jazz, free, and rock music. Intended as a call to reflect on the question and statement "What is American" in an increasingly divided country, PUBLIQuartet's latest album journeys through America's rich musical history. Together, violinist Jannina Norpoth, violinist Curtis Stewart, violist Nick Revel, and cellist Hamilton Berry reimagine old work with improvisations on music by Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, and Betty Davis. With this genre-and centuries-spanning program, PUBLIQuartet reveal the multicultural roots of American music's past and assert Black and Indigenous people's place in its present and future. By bringing marginalized voices back into the fold of western classical music, PUBLIQuartet expand western classical music's ability to respond to and reflect on the most pressing issues of our time.

Co-presented with the Sphinx Organization.

Michela Marino Lerman and Her Band Love Movement

November 18

Tap dancer and choreographer Michela Marino Lerman and her band Love Movement will present a multidisciplinary musical experience inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Levels of Love" speech. A collective of artists working at the intersection of jazz, tap, spirituals, and original music, Lerman and her band Love Movement will remind you of the power of love and its ability to endure all hardship. Lerman's exploration of the seven levels of love-familial love, self-love and realization, protest, prayer, spiritual love, and romantic love-was motivated by her desire to create in service of community. The idea for Love Movement came to Lerman like a revelation, the lyrics and melodies pouring out of her while she was at a crossroads in life. The process of writing her own music carried Lerman through that pain, and now she shares this healing and cathartic experience with the world through Love Movement. Join Michela Marino Lerman and Love Movement for an evening of dance, music, and therapeutic release.

Margaret Leng Tan

December 3

Renowned Avant-garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan, known as the "Queen of the toy piano" and "the world's premier string piano virtuoso," will present a program honoring the late American composer George Crumb and his late wife Elizabeth May Brown. Tan will perform Crumb's final work, Metamorphoses (Book II) for amplified piano, which he personally gave her during a visit to his Pennsylvania home last year. Included in the program is Christopher Hopkins' Arched Interiors II for bowed piano, a condensed version of the original Arched Interiors Hopkins wrote for Tan in 1991. Tan will also introduce the rapturous Minimal music of German composer Hans Otte with selections from his Das Buch der Klänge (The Book of Sounds). Tan explores the full virtuosic potential of the piano's extended possibilities through these three diverse works, drawing on her decades of experience as a trailblazing performer. Join Margaret Leng Tan and National Sawdust in this special commemorative tribute to George and Elizabeth Crumb.

Sofiane Pamart

December 5

French pianist Sofiane Pamart, a.k.a. 'Piano King,' has made a name for himself by bridging the traditionalist western classical world and the always-innovating realm of hip-hop. Pamart's collaborations with rappers like Koba LaD, Vald, Joey Starr, and more have helped piano music shed its staid facade and become more accessible to new listeners. Pamart delivers performances that are visually and technically stunning, and his film-inspired aesthetic has led to partnerships with fashion houses like Yves Saint Laurent and Dior Hommes. A classically-trained pianist with a rapper's flair for storytelling, Pamart aims to bring people together through the emotional vibrancy of his piano compositions. For his only East Coast tour stop, Sofiane Pamart will take piano music into the future with a mix of western classical works and his own hip-hop-classical fusions.

Juilliard Blueprint Bridge Fellowship Concert

December 11

The Blueprint Bridge Fellowship, in partnership with The Juilliard School, is an annual National Sawdust mentorship and commissioning initiative that connects Juilliard alumni and current student composers with career and project mentorship, culminating in a concert of their commissioned projects.

The 2022 winning composers - alumni composers Eugene Astapov, and Lingbo Ma, and current student composers Nicole Balsirow, Aidan Gold, and Sia Uhm - were commissioned to explore collaboration, extra-musical themes, entrepreneurial project creation, and generally out-of-the-box thinking with real-world applications to a dream work that the National Sawdust Ensemble will workshop and perform at National Sawdust.

Matt McBane and Sandbox Percussion

December 16

Chamber quartet Sandbox Percussion will perform composer and violinist Matt McBane's Bathymetry in its entirety in this celebratory album release concert featuring an opening set by Matt McBane. Bathymetry-a reference to how bass synthesizers affect percussive sounds, mimicking how the ocean floor shapes the waves above-draws from western classical minimalism and incorporates modern electronic music production. McBane first became interested in the ocean floor as a teen surfer, and this album sees him recreate that mysterious underwater world. Created for analog synthesizer and percussion, Bathymetry also utilizes a mix of found instruments like mixing bowls, ping-pong balls, and glass bottles in a nod to Youtube ASMR videos. McBane's use of a singular synthesizer acts as a unifying line throughout Bathymetry, shaping each movement like the tide on sea glass. Journey through Earth's final frontier with Sandbox Percussion in this world premiere performance of Matt McBane's Bathymetry as they explore the various ways sound can shape and move us.

To post a comment, you must register and login.