Andrew Drury at the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival. Photo by Kylie Spinelli

This Fall, Improv Spaces is bringing a range of sounds to the space of Mt. Ida Preservation Hall. We start this coming Tuesday with a program with two compelling musicians working in improvisation and electronics, among mediums. Matthew Ryals will be joining us from his tour from New York City with an improvised solo set in support of his new collaborative album Exalge, out September 5 on Infrequent Seams. The record documents a spontaneous first meeting with Italian violist Federica Furlani, captured live in Milan in 2023.

Ryals’ performances traverse microsound, texture, and noise, creating immersive sonic environments that echo natural phenomena while pushing the modular synthesizer into uncharted territory. His work balances precision with unpredictability, drawing listeners into a shifting landscape of fragile detail and visceral intensity.

djdrummernk’s work is well known to the 518, and as an artist, musician and educator, his work spans a wide range of genres across a variety of projects ranging from jazz, electronic, experimental noise, and musical theater. Thanks to his eclectic background, he has opened for an uncommonly diverse collection of artists, from Mobb Deep to the New York City Ballet. In this special set, he will be presenting his improvised percussion and electronics work alongside his improvised projection practice.

MATTHEW RYALS
DJDRUMMERNK

TUES. SEPT. 30th 7-9pm
Mt. Ida Preservation Hall
548 Congress St. Troy, NY
Tickets $20

On Friday, October 3rd from 7-9m at Mt. Ida, Improv Spaces will also be presenting the work of trio collective Andrew Drury (drums), Jill Burton (voice), and Chris Cochrane (guitar) for their Upstate New York tour and the Capital Region-based apostrophebeats for a special solo set.

Andrew Drury at the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival. Photo by Kylie Spinelli.

Andrew Drury is a drummer, composer, improviser, presenter, organizer, and educator originally from Seattle. In addition to 20 years playing with Jason Kao Hwang and Ken Filiano, he performs as a soloist, leads a quartet and tentet, and co-founded the cooperative percussion ensemble, The Forest. Drury founded the non-profit organization Continuum Culture & Arts and 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.

Jill Burton

Jill Burton‘s improvisational practice came came from the cauldron that was the Lower East Side New York in the 1980s. She has since also been studying healing arts. With her move to the Hudson Valley, we are excited to have her nearby in upstate New York.

Chris Cochrane

Chris Cochrane‘s work also comes from the energy that was the 1980s New York scene to the present, having worked with Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Stew Stewart and Eszter Balint, Billy Martin, among them.

apostrophebeats

“apostrophebeats” will also perform for the October 3rd program and is the electronic music project of Capital Region artist Dan Paoletti. Encompassing eclectic influences into a bubbling cauldron of production tricks in order to create a sound entirely unique to this project, apostrophebeats – now in its 10th year – is a restless effluence of sound, combining strains of instrumental hiphop, funky free jazz, vaporwave, cybergrind, chiptune, experimental improvisation, and drum’n’bass with a heavy emphasis on erratic rhythms, chaotic samples, and spiky synths. Each performance is a unique semi-improvised re-interpretation utilizing recorded work from the project’s full lifespan and beyond.

Friday, October 3, 2025
@Mt. Ida Preservation Hall
548 Congress St., Troy, NY
7-9pm
Tickets $20

We are really looking forward to these evenings of experimental sound sets as artists will be fully showcasing their concepts and work for us to experience with them. We hope that you will be able to join us!

See you there!
Alex and Adam