We bring together and develop performance programs with musicians and artists for high caliber collaborations including on experimental collaborations, working with emerging improv-based composers on performing their compositions, and by providing space for improv sessions practice on a regular basis for area musicians to develop the community and their collaborative projects including through workshops and feedback.
IMPROV SPACES MUSIC FESTIVAL
Thanks for attending the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival!
The 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival took place on June 7, 2025 10am-10pm at the Round Lake Auditorium (2 Wesley Ave, Round Lake, NY) 2025 Festival Program
IMPROV SPACES held the first annual 2024 IMPROV SPACES Music Festival in Saratoga County in collaboration with the Round Lake Auditorium from May 29-June 2, 2024, providing space and collaborative opportunities for a range of improv artists to perform, for the general public during a span of five days, including interdisciplinary experimental collaborations, dancing, and food.
COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
IMPROVE SPACES is based in upstate New York in Saratoga County and Capital Region. We are developing projects that can help to serve as a hub in the region and provide resources for new music with a community of interdisciplinary collaborators that also is aimed to introduce the practice of interdisciplinary improvisation to the general public through site-specific work with live performance and virtual interdisciplinary jams, digital projects and animations, and improvisational-based performative workshops.
Improv Spaces Co-Directors worked on convening, performing and presenting at
the Global Performance and Sound Lab at Rutgers University-Newark and New York University
on October 18-19, 2025
SESSIONS & WORKSHOPS
IMPROV SESSIONS
IMPROV SPACES is hosting Improv Sessions — a monthly series of invited improv sessions with musicians that began July 2024 at multiple locations throughout the region including at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Saratoga Arts, Round Lake Auditorium, YESFOLK, and The Barn at Rock City Falls.
The Improv Sessions are meant to bring together musicians working in improvisation who are interested in collaborating with and meeting other musicians, expanding their practice, getting feedback, or building future projects and collaborations.
IMPROV SPACES ENSEMBLE
Ensemble of improvising musicians from the Capital Region. The Ensemble debuted at the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival.
Thanks for making this event a success-we were able to donate fresh produce and shelf-stable food items and hygeine products to two local pantries at Mt. Ida Food Pantry and Captain Community Human Resources Food Pantry.
PAST WORKSHOPS
Open Office Hours
This past spring 2024, Improv Spaces hosted a series of weekly “Open Office Hours” with Saratoga Arts with musicians and artists and was open to the general public involved in improvisation and interdisciplinary improvisation including with music, performance, poetry, and visual arts. The open workshop/session-like atmosphere was meant to welcome artists to come together in an open jam format and to network and form collaborations together.
PERFORMANCES
IMPROV SPACES presents the work of musicians and interdisciplinary artists both locally and beyond.
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES:
IMPROV SPACES PRESENTS:
WINTER/SPRING 2026 SEASON
Up Next!
TICKETS NOW ON SALE!
March 31, 2026
The Feral Hues of
Ellie Irons
&
A Climate Meditation for Solo Drumset
with Curt Newton
An artist talk + workshop and performance at Saratoga Arts
Welcome the Spring with the work of Ellie Irons and Curt Newton as they each ask us to thoughtfully consider our relationships to our immediate environment and our relationship to the beyond human around us. This moment of the Eco Crisis —and how we respond to it— is an important one, both intimate to our lives and something we share more broadly.
Improv Spaces presents an evening artist talk and hands-on workshop to explore the Feral Hues project of Troy-based interdisciplinary artist Ellie Irons and a contemplative offering by Boston-based percussionist Curt Newton with his “A Climate Meditation for Solo Drumset” at Saratoga Arts.
Ellie Irons’s practice spans publicly engaged work — including with the artist collective the Environmental Performance Agency and her work with artist Anne Percoco as The Next Epoch Seed Library — to the nuanced paintings made from colors she creates from the berries, blossoms, and leaves of the plants from urban and disturbed habitats she creates with her Feral Hues project, online component, and book that is now on its third printing. She has previously brought the public on walking tours related to Feral Hues as part of her practice, and will be offering a hands on workshop and artist talk to open this special evening program.
The workshop will be followed by a performance by percussionist Curt Newton. Newton’s work ranges from free jazz ensemble work to his solo percussion. His performance “A Climate Meditation on Solo Drumset” has previously been performed at the MIT Chapel in 2024.
Climate Meditation for Solo Drumset (2024)
His solo drumset work began in 1996, with his adaptation of Witold Lutoslawski’s String Quartet. His recent solo performances are completely improvised and he notes “often with a dedication to our miraculous yet threatened natural world and vibrant web of non-human relations.” We are excited to bring this performance with Iron’s workshop to the community to share these unique experiences with you and to think together about the quickly changing world in which we are enmeshed and our place within in it.
About the artists
Ellie Irons is an interdisciplinary artist based in current-day Troy, New York, where the Mahicannituck and Mohawk Rivers converge. She received an MFA from Hunter College and Phd from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute focused on ecosocial art. She is the Co-Director of NATURE Lab at the Sanctuary for Independent Media. Her book Feral Hues was published in 2023 by PS Hudson.
https://ellieirons.com/
https://www.mediasanctuary.org/
Boston-based percussionist Curt Newton coaxes whispers from drumsets and resonance from stacks of rattly stuff, weaving varied musical traditions in the spirit of dedicated playfulness.
Over four decades, Curt has performed across North America and around the world and appears on scores of recordings with some of improvised music’s leading figures, including Ken Vandermark, Joe Morris, Nate McBride, Pandelis Karayorgis, Charlie Kohlhase, Eric Hofbauer, and Dave Bryant. About one live performance, the Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak wrote “Newton dazzles…He exhibited breathtaking restraint, breaking down time with a subtle hand, tapping out painterly splashes of sound.” Curt studied privately with Bob Gullotti, has a Master’s in Jazz Performance from New England Conservatory.
Complementing and spurring his music, Curt is also an active climate change community builder through volunteer work as an En-ROADS Climate Ambassador, a national convener for the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and the leadership team of the Boston Green New Deal Coaltion. Professionally, he’s Director of MIT OpenCourseWare, which supports millions of learners and educators around the world every year with free open-licensed learning materials from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Website: https://curtnewton.com
MONDAY, March 31, 2026
TIME 7-9PM EST
LOCATION Saratoga Arts Theater at 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY
ADMISSION Tickets $20 – purchase tickets here
Scan QR code for tickets
—
APRIL!
SAVE THE DATE!
April 2, 2026
Improv Spaces Ensemble Performance at Saratoga Arts
The Improv Spaces Ensemble will present a new original improvisation with live analog visuals by Derick Noetzel, inviting audiences into a space of immersive sound & interactive projection.
The Improv Spaces Ensemble brings together Capital Region improvising musicians working across a wide range of instrumentation, textures, and forms.
Ensemble members:
Brian Brancato
Alex Chang
Christian Cocco
Karen Dazzler
Jason Handron
Derek Noetzel
Jeffrey Schanzer
Bernadette Speach
djdrummernk
Chuck Ver Straeten
Dominique Vuvan
The Improv Spaces Ensemble brings together Capital Region improvising musicians working across a wide range of instrumentation, textures, and forms.
We invite you to experience this live performance in the newly renovated Saratoga Arts Theater.
Experience connection through music.
Special thanks to Stewart’s Shops for their support.
Thursday, April 2, 2026
TIME 7-9PM EST
LOCATION Saratoga Arts Theater at 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY
ADMISSION Suggested Donation $20
PAST PERFORMANCES:
February 9, 2026
JAAP BLONK
&
The Schanzer/Speach Duo
An Evening of Improvisations, Experimental Sounds and Collaborations
Voice . Electronics . Guitar . Piano
Join us for an evening with Dutch self-taught composer, performer, poet and visual artist Jaap Blonk performing his project Dr Voxoid‘s Next Move, an improvised voice and electronics performance that ranges from sound poetry, invented languages to other soundscapes.
The Schanzer/Speach Duo, is Upstate New York-based composer/guitarist Jeffrey Schanzer and pianist/composer Bernadette Speach, who have been working together in the experimental music scene with new music, improvisation and performance since the mid-1980s NYC. The pair have composed and performed their commissioned works across the US and internationally.
The performers will each present solo sets and join together in an original improvisation for this special program.
About the performers:
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Netherlands) is a self-taught composer, performer, poet and visual artist. His unfinished studies in mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. In the early 1980s he discovered the power and flexibility of his voice, and set out on a long-term research of phonetics and the possibilities of the human voice.
At present, he has developed into a specialist in the creation and performance of sound poetry and a unique vocal improviser, supported by a powerful and uninhibited stage presence. He has performed and taught around the world, on all continents. With the use of live electronics and sometimes projection of visuals the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.
Blonk’s recorded / published output comprises some 75 titles: CDs, vinyl, cassettes and books. From his sound poetry scores he developed an independent body of visual work, also supported by his renewed interest in mathematical procedures. It has been exhibited in various countries, and selections have been collected in books by publishers in Germany, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Sweden and Brazil.
Schanzer/Speach Duo consists of Jeffrey Schanzer, composer/guitarist and Bernadette Speach, composer/pianist. Their collaborative works combine the intuition and spontaneity of improvisation with the structure of formal composition. The Duo had its premiere performance in October 1986 at Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York City. Since that time, they have performed in New York at Roulette, St. Ann’s Church, the Knitting Factory, The Stone and Dia Center for the Arts, and in Newark, Hartford, Buffalo, Chicago, Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, Puerto Rico, Gent and Liege, Belgium, and Cologne and Herne, Germany. Dualities, the Duo’s first CD, was released on the Mode/Avant label in January 1992 and was picked as one of the top 10 recordings of 1992 by Robert Hicks in Jazziz magazine. The Duo has had works written for it by Lester Bowie, Kitty Brazelton, Michael Colquhoun, Fred Ho, Joseph Jarman, Oliver Lake, Tania León, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Betsy McClelland, William Ortiz, Wadada Leo Smith and Steven Swartz. Artists who have performed with the Duo include Lester Bowie, Thomas Buckner, Michael Colquhoun, Barbara Held, Joseph Jarman, Oliver Lake, Joelle Leandre, Fred Ho, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Myra Melford, David Pleasant, Bobby Previte, Alva Rogers, Ned Rothenberg, Wadada Leo Smith, Warren Smith, Libby Van Cleve and Jack Vees.
Schanzer also appears with his group The Jeffrey Schanzer Ensemble, which has brought together musicians such as Leroy Jenkins, Bobby Previte and Ned Rothenberg. His No More In Thrall, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald where his father was a prisoner, performed by the Sirius String Quartet with percussionist Kevin Norton, was released on the Composers Recording Inc. (CRI) label. Speach’s activities as a composer have included performances of Within, for piano and orchestra, by Ursula Oppens and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Les Ondes pour Quartre, premiered by the Arditti String Quartet in Darmstadt, Germany. In and Out of Love – after Liaisons and Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music, was premiered by Anthony de Mare, pianist and Artistic Director of “Liaisons: Re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano”, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, which commissioned the work. More recently Embrace the Universe (2001) for Orchestra, Chorus (SATB) and soloists: Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, Piano, with text: “Hymn to Matter” from The Divine Milieu by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was premiered in 2016 at the Teatro Petruzzelli, Bari, Italy. 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.
MONDAY, February 9, 2026
TIME 7-9PM EST
LOCATION Saratoga Arts Theater at 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY
ADMISSION Tickets $20
Scan QR code for tickets
PUBLIC WORKSHOP / EVENT
December 11, 2025
Illusions of Time
Finding your place in the challenge of continuity
Pheeroan akLaff
Participants will engage with a purview of the social, political, and heightened sensitivity of jazz pedagogy, its impact, and meaning in American life. They will advance cognizance of pre-colonial and African diaspora art practices that fostered jazz as a response to Euro-centric performance art practices.
Workshop
This workshop is approximately 75 minutes in duration and is driven by the interaction of the participants. It will explore rhythm in music, poetry, and world events, as well as the impressions the cycles have on our immediate and recorded histories. We will listen to ancient sounds, modern sounds, and reflect upon their significance in our daily lives. We will engage in playful challenge and record our reactions to what is demanded of us in protocols. There is no need for musical training for these exercises. Our goal will be to gain a new perspective from an unexpected source and refresh our sense of curiosity.
Topics covered will include:
From Full Circle To Whole Cylinder
Finding Voice Wrestling with Homeostasis
Shepherding the Metamorphosis
This will be followed by a solo by akLaff
The program is open to percussionists and non-percussionists and will also expose participants to discussions probing the spiritual, stylistic, political, and economic environments within 19th and 20th Century Jazz creators. Reference Authors may include Psyche Loui, Robert Palmer, Gary Giddins, Giovanni Rosellini, Jon Parales, Bill Cole, Ben Sidran, Oliver Sachs, Ingrid Monson, Stanley Crouch, Roger Riggins, Chip Stern, and Jose Arguelles, alongside Reference Musician Biographies such as Blind Tom, Willie Ruff, Thelonius Monk, Cannonball Adderley, Art Taylor, and Yusef Lateef.
Participants may be asked to bring a few simple materials to support the workshop activities, including a plastic bucket of any kind (preferably in the large Lowe’s, Home Depot, or joint-compound size), any colors of magic markers, and a notebook. A Swiss Army knife or screwdriver may also be brought if available, though it is not necessary.
THURSDAY, DEC 11, 2025
TIME 7-9PM
LOCATION Arts Letters & Numbers, 1548 Burden Lake Road, Averill Park, NY
ADMISSION Free to the public with suggested donation $20
Artist Bio
Pheeroan akLaff’s signature drumming with adventuresome composers has been voluminously documented. His studies with “Pistol” Allen (Motown) and Randall Hicks (NJSO), was broadened by living and working in Abidjan, Cote D’ivoire, with the African ballet company of Marie Rose Guiraud, and by meeting Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and Steve Rhodes in Lagos Nigeria. He participated in U.S. State Department tours of nine African nations, the Near East, and India. He has toured Japan and Korea with national treasure artist Yamashita Yosuke since 1988. He made groundbreaking collaborations with Oliver Lake, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Davis, Henry Threadgill, Liu Sola, Tom Pierson, Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, and has interdisciplinary work with Dr. Psyche Loui and Dr. Julian F. Thayer. Through Seed Artists, a New York City and Montclair, New Jersey based non-profit, akLaff presents and expands the terrain of creative music. https://pheeroanaklaff.com/home
In collaboration with Arts Letters & Numbers
Images courtesy of Pheeroan akLaff. All rights reserved by the artist.
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ARCHIVE OF PAST PERFORMANCES:
TUES. SEPT. 30th 7-9pm
Mt. Ida Preservation Hall
548 Congress St. Troy, NY
Tickets $20
MATTHEW RYALS
djdrummernk
Join us for a special evening of immersive sound and light at Mt. Ida Preservation Hall with New York City-based Matt Ryals and Capital Region’s own djdrummernk.
As a synthesist and composer-improviser whose music delves into improvisation, real-time sound generation, cybernetics, chance operations, and archival experimentation, Matthew takes a highly tactile live approach to the modular synthesizer—much like an acoustic musician shaping sound, he manipulates electricity by constantly adjusting dials, switches, and patch points, allowing each performance to unfold spontaneously in the moment. He has performed his music internationally, including concerts in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Europe, and across North America
Described as “a sonic explorer on the frontier of experimental music” whose work is “a fascinating foray to the edges of generative music production” (Plastic Mag), Matthew’s music has been praised for its “full-blown cybernetic synth shocks and mirrors” that are “unabashedly confident” (Tabs Out) and for treating sounds “as if they were alive, breathing” to create something “truly immersive and unforgettable” (Beats Per Minute).
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 eclectic background, he has opened for an uncommonly diverse collection of artists, from Mobb Deep to the New York City Ballet.
collage by Eric Sorg
Fri, Oct 3, 2025
@Mt. Ida Preservation Hall
548 Congress St., Troy, NY
7-9pm
Improv Spaces is thrilled to present the experimental sounds of the 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 at Mt Ida Preservation Hall.
Brooklyn-based drummer, composer, improviser, presenter, organizer, and educator Andrew Drury wowed audiences up here in the summer at the Improv Spaces Music Festival with the Human Rites Trio. We’re excited to have him back upstate with this new trio collective with veteran improvisers Jill Burton (voice) and Chris Cochrane (guitar) as their Capital Region stop on their upstate tour. Jill is based in the Hudson Valley but was a fixture in the Lower East Side 1980’s interdisciplinary arts scene and has since also spent more than fifteen years studying and practicing non-invasive medical modalities including Reiki, Ortho-Bionomy and Sound Healing. Among Chris’s work as a Brooklyn-based musician, guitarist, improviser, noise maker, collaborator and composer, includes working with musicians Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Stew Stewart and Eszter Balint, Billy Martin, among them since the early 80’s.
“apostrophebeats” 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.
We’ve been hoping to present apostrophebeats in a long form solo capacity for a while now, so we are excited to be able to hear this special set.
Friday, August 15
with Improv Spaces Ensemble & guests
Invitation by Bee Side Cassettes for live score of the film
The Neverending Story
Clinton Market Collective
11 Clinton Ave, Albany, NY
8pm – free admission
Improv Spaces Ensemble with
Justin Holden, guitar
Alex Chang, electric harp
Christian Thomas, bass and synthesizer
Adam Forman, drums
djdrummernk, percussion and electronics
Matt Weston, percussion
with Dan Paoletti @apostrophebeats and Derek Noetzel with projection visuals!
June 7, 2025
Improv Spaces Music Festival
Premier: Sonic Explorations in Troy
The premier of the Rock City Falls Trio (Alex Chang, harp; Jason Handron, bass; Adam Forman, drums) and artist/multi-instrumentalist Manuel J. Perez III collaborative incubator project with Improv Spaces artist-in-residence at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
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MARCH 12, 2025 — RSVP
March 30, 2025 —
Co-Sponsored by Improv Spaces
More Music Less Violence presents
Girls Need Love 2
The Independent Artists Experience
5-8PM
at The Madison Theatre
1036 Madison Ave, Albany, NY
All women line-up — $10 cover
featuring Lace, Aila, Ke $upreme, Attaquinetta, V3X, Shaun Jeannette, Aniya Kouture, Goldenkisses, Chelsea Denae, Gracie Lineham,
and Alex Chang
Photo by Kémiyah Griffin
———————–
FEBRUARY 25, 2025
Location: Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
30 Second Street, Troy, NY
Time: 7-9pm
DECEMBER 2, 2024
AN ILL-FITTING GARMENT—
Album Release Tour
with Eli Wallace, Bill Harris,
Josh Berman and Ishmael Ali
& special opening performance by
Matt Weston
Location: Mt. Ida Preservation Hall
548 Congress St, Troy, NY
Time: 7:30-9:30pm
Tickets on sale now! Eventbrite link: $20 suggested donation
Join us on the first stop of the album release tour of An Ill-Fitting Garment featuring Brooklyn and Chicago-based musicians Eli Wallace, piano; Bill Harris, drums; Josh Berman, cornet; and Ishmael Ali, cello. The evening will open with a special performance by Albany-based percussionist Matt Weston.
Special Thanks to Artist Pianos
———————–
THANKS! To everyone who came to
The Long Jam!
Jaha Orende on the djembe at The Long Jam. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Adam Elabd on bass and Adam Tinkle on guitar at The Long Jam. 
Max Caulkins, Justin Holden on guitar, and djdrummernk on percussion. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Adam Tinkle on guitar. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Djdrummernk on percussion. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Alex Chang on electric harp. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Matt Weston on percussion. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Eddie Jowels on drums. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Adam Forman on drums. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Jason King on guitar. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
djdrummernk on percussion. Photo credit: Sam Chabot. 
Jason Handron on doublebass. Photo credit: Sam Chabot.
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Improv Spaces @ Saratoga Arts presents
Jonathan Moritz and Mike Pride
SUMMERTIME
An outdoor performance celebrating the new album release
Time: 6:30pm-8pm
Location: Outdoor performance at Saratoga Arts Center 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Free with suggested donation of $10-20
More Info
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Thursday, July 18, 2024 — Improv Spaces presents
fluxxbaby ‚girlflux EP‘ RELEASE TOUR and DEATH RATTLED
@ Saratoga Arts Theater 8-9h30pm more
fluxxbaby
Death Rattled
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Sunday, March 17, 2024 — Improv Spaces presents
EARTH TONGUES “Anenome” and SUN DOGS —
@ Saratoga Arts Theater 5-7pm more
Earth Tongues
Sun Dogs
IMPROV SPACES is thrilled about our
upcoming programs!
past projects
September 9, 2023
Performed live at The Barn at Rock City Falls, NY by the Rock City Falls Trio
Alex Chang, harp
Jason Handron, double bass
Adam Forman, drums
Filmed and edited by Steph Ching
recorded 9.3.2023 at the barn at rock city falls
alex chang, electric harp
jason handron, double bass
adam forman, drums
and christian a. mendoza, live painting
IMPROV SPACES 