2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival

ROUND LAKE AUDITORIUM
(2 Wesley Ave, Round Lake, NY)

$25 general admission for the day-long festival!
Student tickets are $5 to be presented with ID;
children 12 years old and under are free — bring the family!

The 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival presents
an impressive roster of 35 musicians and collaborators
hailing from the Capital Region and beyond for
this day-long program of improvised music.

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE!

9:30am — Doors Open!

Join us for a community brunch served from 9:30am-1pm
Food will be provided!
And food vendors Vashti’s Kitchen Delights, Stinky’s Coffee, and the Saratoga Tap Truck will be with us throughout the day and evening

10am-10:30am — Joseph Bruchac, native flute

Writer, musician, and traditional storyteller, Joseph Bruchac is a tribally enrolled citizen of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation. Writer, musician, and traditional storyteller, Joseph Bruchac is a a tribally enrolled citizen of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation. A best-selling author of over 180 books in several genres, his poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and hundreds of magazines ranging from Akwesasne Notes, Cricket, and Highlights for Children, to the Paris Review, Smithsonian, and National Geographic.

His many honors include a New York State Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, the American Book Award, the Virginia Hamilton Award, the National Education Association Civil Rights Award, the National Wildlife Federation Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. In 2023 he was chosen as the first Poet Laureate of Saratoga Springs, NY.

As a musician, he has focused on traditional Northeastern Native music and the ballads of the days of logging in the Adirondack region, as well as composing his own songs. For a number of years he, his sister Marge, and his two grown sons Jesse and James performed together as the Dawn Land Singers and released two CDs of original and traditional Abenaki music: ALNOBAK and HONOR SONGS/ GWISINTOW8GANAL. An accomplished Native flute player and drummer, he has been featured as a musician at schools, festivals and other venues throughout the United States including the Champlain Valley Festival, Abenaki Cultural Heritage Days, the Old Songs Festival, The Flurry, The Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival Festival, the Corn Island Festival, the National Storytelling Festival, The Eighth Step, the Kanatsiohareke Strawberry Festival, the Sierra Storytelling Festival, and Caffe Lena.

10:30am-10:45am — Introduction with Festival Co-Directors Alex Chang & Adam Forman

Photo by Jessica Tomaselli

11am-11:45am —
Jonathan Fuller & Nicholas Kopp aka djdrummernk

Nicholas Kopp aka djdrummernk (left); Jonathan Fuller (right)

Jonathan Fuller, pipe organ
Nicholas Kopp aka djdrummernk, percussion and electronics

Jonathan Fuller holds a bachelor of music degree in horn performance from the State University of New York at Fredonia. While at Fredonia he studied horn with Marc Guy and musicology with James A. Davis. He held principal horn chairs in Fredonia’s symphony orchestra, wind ensemble, chamber orchestra and with the Hillman Opera Orchestra, and was fourth horn in the Western New York Chamber Orchestra. Jonathan was a finalist in Fredonia’s 2006 Concerto Competition and appears as a performer on Commissions and Concertos (Albany Records TROY1252).

Jonathan has played organ since 2015 and was organist and senior choir director at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Clifton Park from 2018 until 2021. In November 2018 he led the senior choir to Carnegie Hall to premiere two works by Pepper Choplin. Jonathan has lived in Round Lake since 2008 and frequently assists visiting organists with the historic Davis-Ferris organ.

Nicholas Kopp aka djdrummernk is an artist, musician and educator whose work spans a wide range of genres across a variety of projects ranging from jazz, electronic, experimental noise, and musical theater. Thanks to eclectic background, he has opened for an uncommonly diverse collection of artists, from Mobb Deep to the New York City Ballet

12:15pm-1pm — Special Creek

Sam Katz, mandolinist and vocalist
Deena Chappell, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter
Andy Roth, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist
Tim Barker, guitarist and vocalist
Bob Zink, bass player and vocalist
Adam Forman, percussionist

Several years ago, a group of pickers got together at a bluegrass festival in Vermont. After a few days of music and camaraderie, they discovered that they had created something unique, and Special Creek was born. There have been personnel changes over the years, but Special Creek remains a group of excellent musicians that enjoy playing music together. And it shows!

Members of the group are: mandolinist and vocalist Sam Katz, who had a Nashville based bluegrass band; multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter Deena Chappell, is well known in the Saratoga area; multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Andy Roth, is also known by all in Saratoga; guitarist and vocalist Tim Barker of the “Bob Barker Band;” bass player and vocalist Bob Zink is an original member; percussionist Adam Forman brings his progressive touch.

Founded in bluegrass, Special Creek’s music knows no boundaries. Borrowing from all genres and traditions, the band puts their own special spin on the music, and has been well received at local events, weddings, festivals, and concert venues such as Saratoga’s Caffé Lena.

“Each of the players bring their own unique special talents to the mix like no other band… [we] had one hour of fine acoustic music… [they] have all been playing music for a long time and they have an easiness about them that testifies to this.” Adirondack Bluegrass League Newsletter

1:30pm-2:00pm —
Shiloh Wilson, Lee Gnau, and Erik Pravel

Shiloh Wilson, steel pan
Lee Gnau, bass/guitar
Erik Pravel, drums

L-R: Shiloh the Messenger – Steel Pan/Vocals; Lee Gnau – Bass/Guitar; Erik Pravel – Drums

Shiloh is a multifaceted artist from upstate New York. Originating in a background of Reggae, Motown, and Calypso, Shiloh has infused his vast musical taste into many forms including rapping, and syncopation of the steel drum. He continues to expand his artistry and push the limits of creativity in music.

Lee Gnau is a guitarist, bassist, and music connoisseur who embodies the essence of any genre he’s performing in. His blend of smooth, soothing instrumentation, mixed with his soulful harmonic melodies, provides a unique experience to every listener.

Erik (aka Rick) performs with various groups in the Capital Region. Known for crossing genres and blending styles in pursuit of elevating the sound.

2:30-3:15pm — Improv Spaces Ensemble

Improv Spaces Ensemble is a new improvisational ensemble formed by Capital Region Musicians and collaborators

Photo by Sam Chabot

Jess Bowen, violin
Sabrina Trueheart, nylon guitar
Justin Holden, guitar
Alex Chang, electric harp
Jason Handron, string bass
Christian Thomas, bass and synthesizer
Adam Elabd, winds, bass, and vocals
Adam Tinkle, woodwinds/electronics
Cousin Angus, brass, vocals, and electronics
Karen Dazzler, sax
Adam Forman, drums
Nicholas Kopp aka djdrummernk, percussion and electronics
Matt Weston, percussion

4:15pm-4:45pm — Ethan Cohn & MAYSUN

Ethan Cohn (left); MAYSUN (right), photo by Chienn Tai

Ethan Cohn is a bass player, composer, improvisor, and educator born and raised in New York City. Known for his versatility across genres and his love of musical cross-pollination, his work reflects his sponge-like capacity to absorb and integrate his many interests into one unified voice. Holding collaboration as a central tenet of his practice, he frequently fuses worlds of jazz and rock, composition and improvisation, acoustic and electric, tradition and invention, and is interested in the potential of electronics as both a compositional tool and an interface for live performers and improvisors.

Ethan is an alumnus of McGill University, and spent several years immersing himself in Montreal’s rich music scene before moving to Switzerland to participate in Focusyear Basel, a year-long jazz residency. He returned to his home of New York in 2021 and completed his master’s studies at The New School’s Performer-Composer program.
https://ethan-cohn.com/
https://www.instagram.com/cornbread6666/

Etienne Mason, known professionally as MAYSUN, is a composer and sound artist known for his unique blend of drumming expertise and sound design, creating immersive atmospheric soundscapes. With a focus on the use of physical space to shape and manipulate sounds, he crafts compositions that serve as soundtracks to his life events.

MAYSUN‘s work is characterized by an innovative approach that transforms real-life sounds into musical tones, skillfully interweaving the dimensions of time and space within his compositions. His work explores spatial audio, technology, and the emotional impact of sound.

In addition to his artistic pursuits, MAYSUN has been serving on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) since 2023. He completed the 2024 ITP/IMA Fellowship at New York University, is currently a mentor at New Inc., and is a participant in the New Amsterdam Composers’ Lab.
www.maysun.zip
https://maysunmusic.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/maysun.music/

5pm-5:45pm — Human Rites Trio

Jason Kao Hwang, composer, violin, viola
Ken Filiano, string bass
Andrew Drury, drum set

Each composition is a progression of gestures, songs, movements and locations that bring participants into a state of discovery and compassion. Within these Human Rites, individual voices are empowered to be fully expressive so that each moment is unpredictable and deeply intentional. This psychic intensity, both sacred and sacrificial, provokes a heightened awareness that unifies Listeners and Musicians within a spiritual entrainment. As we hear ourselves within music we become Music, which is no longer a performance but an affirmation of justice and celebration of life. – Jason Kao Hwang

The music of Jason Kao Hwang (composer/violin/viola) explores the vibrations of his history. His most recent releases, Soliloquies, Book of Stories, and The Human Rites Trio, have received critical acclaim. Raised during the “melting pot” era of assimilation, Mr. Hwang did not learn Chinese from his immigrant parents, only English. When his parents spoke in Chinese to each other, he would listen intently to glean meaning from their inflection, rhythm, and timbre. Mr. Hwang imagines this musical experience of the Chinese language as the foundation of his creative instincts. In 2020, 2019, 2018, 2013 and 2012, the El Intruso International Critics Poll voted him #1 for Violin/Viola. The 2012 Downbeat Critics’ Poll voted Mr. Hwang as Rising Star for Violin. His chamber opera The Floating Box, A Story in Chinatown was one of the Top Ten Opera Recordings of 2005 by Opera News. Mr. Hwang has received support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Chamber Music America, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, and others. As violinist, he has worked with William Parker, Henry Threadgill, Reggie Workman, Joëlle Leandre, Taylor Ho Bynum, Tomeka Reid, Anthony Braxton, Patrick Brennan, Steve Swell, Pauline Oliveros, Butch Morris, and others.

Andrew Drury is a drummer, composer, improviser, presenter, organizer, and educator originally from Seattle. In addition to 20 years playing with Hwang and Filiano he performs as a soloist, leads a quartet and tentet, and co-founded the cooperative percussion ensemble, The Forest. A mentee of Ed Blackwell for a decade he has performed and recorded with JD Parran, Alexis Marcelo, Frank Lacy, Myra Melford, Mark Dresser, Ingrid Laubrock, Tomeka Reid, Warren Smith, Kris Davis, John Tchicai, Wadada Leo Smith, and many more. In 2015 Drury founded the non-profit organization Continuum Culture & Arts to support the wide range of activities he and his colleagues are involved in, bringing world-class artists into historically marginalized communities across the US, facilitating international cultural exchange, documenting work via recordings, video, and an oral history archive, providing organizational assistance to artists via Continuum’s Incubation program. He also runs Soup & Sound, a performance series begun in his Brooklyn home in 2009. Drury has been called “one of the most adventurous drummer/percussionists in creative music today, and a dedicated humanitarian” by All About Jazz and the Jazz Journalists Association named him a “Jazz Hero” in 2023.

Ken Filiano is a bassist, composer, improviser, and teacher who performs around the world, fusing the rich traditions of the double bass with his own seemingly limitless imagination. A “creative virtuoso” (JazzValley), Ken has performed and recorded with a veritable who’s who in multiple genres, from Anthony Braxton to Pablo Ziegler. Ken leads two quartets, Quantum Entanglements and Baudolino’s Dilemma, and is co-leader of The Steve Adams/Ken Filiano Duo and other collective ensembles. He is also an integral member of groups led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Jason Kao Hwang, Fay Victor, Vinny Golia, Diane Moser, Karl Berger, and others, and was a key member of groups led by the late Roswell Rudd and Connie Crothers. Ken’s extensive discography includes the solo CD, “Subvenire”(Nine Winds) and Quantum Entanglements’s “Dreams From a Clown Car” (Clean Feed). Ken is a Guiding Artist for the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, and has been a guest artist lecturer at School of Visual Arts and Hunter College (New York). He teaches master classes in bass and improvisation, and has a private bass studio in Brooklyn, NY.

6:45-7:45pm — Sonic Explorations in Troy — Premiere
Improv Spaces artist-in-residence incubator project
with the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

Photo by Kylie Spinelli

Rock City Falls Trio
Alex Chang, electric harp
Jason Handron, bass
Adam Forman, drums
in collaboration with
artist and multi-instrumentalist Manuel J. Perez III

The Rock City Falls Trio (Alex Chang, harp; Jason Handron, double bass; and Adam Forman, drums) and multi-instrumentalist and visual artist Manuel J. Perez III created this collaborative improvisational multimedia work with input from participants from the Troy community through a community gathering/workshop at Mt Ida Preservation Hall and the incubator project workshop performance and community feedback session at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. The work attempts to incorporate our collective joys, trials, and experiences of the city of Troy into a music and visual art project.

L-R (front): Jason Handron and Adam Forman; (back) Alex Chang and Manuel J. Perez III. Photo by Kylie Spinelli

The Rock City Falls Trio (Alex Chang, harp; Jason Handron, double bass; and Adam Forman, drums) is a cross-genre improvisation-based music ensemble based in the Capital Region.

Alex Chang (she/her) is an electric acoustic harpist and composer. Her musical practice finds its foundations in free jazz, indie rock, Celtic and new music, and her classical training. She explores entanglements and embodied practices through the concepts of free jazz and improvisation and the ways in which music moves through us and puts us in relation and dialogue with others. Her interest in collaborative practices attends to how improvisation opens up our sentience, our emotional and empathic relations around us and beyond as intertwined beings for connection and healing. Her work often focuses on the arts and environment and centering BIPOC communities. She is part of the Rock City Falls Trio, a cross-genre ensemble that often works interdisciplinarily through collaborative improvisation. She recently completed a Jazz and Sonic Arts Music residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and premiered Sharing a Woven Melody at the 2024 Gather Listen Hear Summer Arts Festival Jazz and Sonic Arts Concert. @alexachang2000

Jason Handron (b.1995) is a composer and bassist from Albany, NY. He has been featured as both a composer and performer at events such as the soundSCAPE Festival (Maccagno, Italy) and the New Music Gathering (Boston, MA). He currently performs with the Rock City Falls trio and teaches private lessons in the NY Capital Region.

Jason holds a B.M. in Music Composition from the State University of New York at Fredonia and an M.M. in Music Composition from Bowling Green State University.

Adam Forman is a classically trained drummer/percussionist who has performed in a wide range of musical settings. He has worked with composer/director/multi- instrumentalist Joe Fee and innovative collective IKTUS Percussion. His deep focus on improvisational practice and sensibilities allows for inventive syntheses of his experiences in experimental musical performance, including his punk and indie-rock influenced work.

In addition, he has rich experience working in collaborative experimental performance and interdisciplinary practices with music, improvisation across genres, and with the administrative aspects of running musical spaces and the creative musical direction of ensembles. He has significant performance experience including at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Austin, Texas as a member of Talujon Percussion Quartet and with the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Fireworks Ensemble, and Greenwich Village Orchestra, as well as with the Manhattan Symphonie across China, and on large-scaled cruise ships and in theaters throughout New York City. He was also drummer for the bi-coastal band Butterscotch Stanley for more than a decade.

Recently he’s been exploring composing and rearranging music that would inspire unique, improvised-based performances. Adam’s arrangement of free jazz master Masahiko Togashi’s Pray was performed by the Rock City Falls Trio at their recent concert titled Equilibrium: a collaborative improv in September 2023.

Manuel J. Perez III (any pronouns) is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, performer, improviser, and researcher based in the northeastern USA. Treating all media, processes, and actions as generative vehicles of expression, their artwork integrates disciplines such as performance art, free improvisation, experimental composition, collage, datamoshing, architecture, poetry, artificial intelligence, and more. Their works often foreground the lived histories of everyday people as a means to investigate how ways of becoming and knowing are enabled through performativity, sociality, self-expression, and spontaneous action. They believe deeply in the power of togetherness, and prioritize the creation of art that encourages the development of community, empathy, and understanding of oneself and others.

Their artistic work has been shared internationally within the bland white walls of institutions such as Istanbul Bilgi University, Technische Universität Berlin, and Wesleyan University. They are a member/close collaborator of multiple spontaneous performance collectives, series, and venues around the United States (Fort Point Free Music; Dino Crisis; Structure Affliction; Colbish Circle; Troy Speakeasy; etc.), and prioritize working closely with communities that are new to improvisation and performance. Manuel has collaborated with folks such as Tyshawn Sorey, Wadada Leo Smith, Chris Pitsiokos, Nat Baldwin, Marc Edwards, David Berhman, TAK Ensemble, SPLICE Ensemble, Paula Matthusen, and Michael Century. As Death Rattled, their visual and sonic collage art thrives within DIY spontaneous performance communities worldwide.

Thanks for the support of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall and Jess Bowen and their artist in residence.

Special thanks to Mt. Ida Preservation Hall and Michael Easterbrook, The Hart Cluett Museum and Kathy Sheehan, and The Hudson Mowhawk Gateway Museum and Susan Ouellette. This performance is made possible in part by generous support from The Arts Center of the Capital Region, National Endowment for the Arts & New York State.

8:15pm-9pm Electronic Cinema

Joe Fee
Ed Fritz
Mike Sojkowski
on a fusion of synthesizers from across the decades

Electronic Cinema is a trio specializing in live film scoring, reimagining the great classics of the Silent Era with a fusion of synthesizers from across the decades. Members Joe Fee, Ed Fritz and Mike Sojkowski blend vintage analog with modern electronic textures, creating new ways to experience cinema’s earliest masterpieces. The group creates new edited versions of each film for each performance, encouraging the audience to engage with the stories in new ways. More information can be found on their Youtube page @_ElectronicCinema.

Throughout the day — Community Altar
installation by Swan Ferraro

Transmutation, by Swan Ferraro.

Swan Ferraro (they/he) is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, performance, and photo/video. Individual and collective healing are emphasized in the work through the use of ritual. Their current research is titled Creative Improvisation as a Form of Divination in the Trans Body. By surrendering to the body and the space which holds it, magick can seep into the work. Trauma can be transcended and new realities can be created through this practice. Swan is an MFA Candidate in 4D Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.