The Improv Spaces Ensemble brings together Capital Region improvising musicians working across a wide range of instruments, musical languages, and approaches. Rooted in collaboration and experimentation, the ensemble creates original performances through collective improvisation and interdisciplinary exchange.
Since 2025, the ensemble has debuted new original improvisations at the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival at the Round Lake Auditorium, at the Saratoga Arts Theater, and Clinton Market Collective in Albany. For the 2026 Improv Spaces Music Festival, the ensemble presents a new site-specific improvisation created for the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall’s historic main stage.
FEATURING
Alex Chang, electric harp
Alex is a composer, harpist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work spans improvisation, immersive performance, technology, and visual media. She is a member of the Rock City Falls Trio, a cross-genre ensemble dedicated to collaborative improvisation and interdisciplinary performance. Her practice explores embodied approaches to sound, investigating how vibration and listening move through the body and connect individuals through shared experience. Drawing from free jazz, indie rock, Celtic traditions, and contemporary classical music, her work reflects the hybridity of contemporary life and her diasporic identity. Her album Abandon (Adhyâropa Records) was released in July 2026. She is Co-Director of Improv Spaces and an Associate Professor of Practice at Rutgers University.
(Photo by Jessica Tomaselli)
Christian Cocco, electric guitar, bass, synthesizer
New Haven, Connecticut-born Christian Thomas is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer based in Troy, New York. Drawing from a range of influences and sounds, including IDM, jazz, krautrock, and ambient music.
Jason Handron, string bass
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.
Derek Noetzel, video artist
Derick Noetzel is a video artist and multimedia specialist from upstate NY. With a video synthesizer and video mixer, he creates live audio reactive analog “visuals” AKA video installations using several projectors and sometimes televisions.This creates an immersive experience where a light show is dependent on the sounds and shapes of the room, an additional layer of video art intertwined with the sound of the music.
Jeffery Schanzer, classical and electric guitars
Jeffrey Schanzer is a composer and guitarist involved in a wide variety of music, ranging from fully notated to fully improvised. He has studied composition with Morton Feldman and Anthony Davis and guitar with Oswald Rantucci. Jeffrey performs with his wife, composer/pianist Bernadette Speach, in Schanzer/Speach Duo, and leads the Jeffrey Schanzer Ensemble. Within the context of the Duo and his Ensemble, Jeffrey has worked with such musicians as Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins, Oliver Lake, Myra Melford, Bobby Previte, Ned Rothenberg and Wadada Leo Smith. His recordings include The Past Is Present, a cantata about and by Holocaust survivors and their children, the text of which was taken from the
oral testimony of members of his family, on the Neuma label, Dualities by the Schanzer/Speach Duo on the Mode label and, as a sideman, Leroy Jenkins’ and Joseph Jarman’s Out of the Mist on Ocean Records.
https://jeffreyschanzer.com/
Bernadette Speach, piano and toy piano
Although trained in the classical idiom, Bernadette Speach is equally rooted in jazz and improvisation ranging from solo, chamber, choral and orchestral. Her latest project, the opera The Little Rock Nine – a collaboration with librettist Thulani Davis, tells the story of nine students, ages 14 and 15, who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957-58. The Little Rock Nine reunites Speach with Davis. The pair redefine the art of poetry and music fusion. Speach’s post-minimalistic jazz punctuates Davis’ considerable literary depth. As a presenter she has commissioned and presented multiple composers of diverse genres. As a seasoned improviser she has performed with her husband, composer/guitarist Jeffrey Schanzer and a host of others. As pianist she is highly regarded for her interpretations of the keyboard repertoire of John Cage, including In a Landscape and pieces for toy piano.www.bernadettespeach.com
Adam Tinkle, pipe organ and flute
Multidisciplinary artist Adam Tinkle fuses sonic, social, visual and literary artforms in ever-changing kaleidoscopic combinations. Known for his combustible mixture of ancestral populism and ear-bending experimentalism, he makes soulful singer/songwriter music that fizzes with ear-bending harmony and dense orchestration, as well as instrumental music of timbral delicacy, harmonic, sophistication and direct, song-like melodic expression. He recently premiered an evening-length work for pipe organ as Artist-in-Residence at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
Chuck Ver Straeten, “voice as instrument”
A former trombonist for 26 years, Chuck Ver Straeten is an improvisor who now uses his voice, like an instrument. Words just occur when they pop through. Associated with the Creative Music Studio (CMS) since 1978, he has a broad spectrum of musics and sound to draw from. From 2010 to 2023, he studied independently with Karl Berger pianist, vibraphonist, and Director of Creative Music Studio. He is a long time member of the CMS Improvisors Orchestra, with monthly concerts. Joining Improv Spaces began in 2025.
Other recent aspects of playing and performance include the Woodstock, NY “Sound Painting” ensemble for five years, solo voice and wood flute improvisations at art show openings (since ~2002), and duo performances with guitarist Rick Warren (Warren-Ver Straeten Half Quartet).
His recording at leader, “Stories, Mostly Without Words”, with Karl Berger (piano), Michael Bisio (bass), and Harvey Sorgen (drums) is available thru Bandcamp https://chuckverstraeten.bandcamp.com/album/stories-mostly-without-words. The recording is totally improvised.
His recording at leader, “Stories, Mostly Without Words”, with Karl Berger (piano), Michael Bisio (bass), and Harvey Sorgen (drums) is available thru Bandcamp https://chuckverstraeten.bandcamp.com/album/stories-mostly-without-words. The recording is totally improvised.
PERFORMANCE
Improv Spaces Ensemble
Finale – Original Improvisation
Time: 7:15-8:00pm
Location: Music Hall Stage
IMPROV SPACES 