Sound Moss: What Emerges Between Us
Sound Moss: What Emerges Between Us
Sound Moss, an improvisational listening ensemble that is organized by internationally exhibiting sound artist China Blue, brings together accomplished experimental musicians exploring the possibilities of sound, silence, and spontaneous collaboration. The evening begins with individual solo performances, revealing each musician's distinctive sonic language, and culminates in a collective improvisation shaped entirely by attentive listening and response.
Inspired by the pioneering work of Pauline Oliveros, Sound Moss invites audiences into an evolving sonic experience where unexpected relationships emerge and listening itself becomes an act of creation.
Artist: China Blue, Ben Richter, David Rothenberg, Jane Rigler, Katie Down, Shawn Feeney
Ben Richter is a composer, accordionist, and founding Artistic and Executive Director of Ghost Ensemble. Inspired by nonhuman consciousness, Ben’s music orients toward interacting gradual processes that cross acoustic thresholds to auralize the vast and infinitesimal timescales we may not experience in everyday life. As an accordionist, Ben explores modifications and techniques that extend the instrument’s microtonal and timbral capacities. With Ghost Ensemble, Ben’s recent collaborators include Diapason Brass, Loadbang, House On Fire, Middle Ear Project, UMass-Amherst’s Futuring Lab and Y3K exhibitions, Jack Dettling, Goldie Poblador & M Dougherty, Jeonghyeon Joo, Sky Macklay, Phill Niblock, and Lei Han. An active Deep Listening facilitator in the tradition of early mentor Pauline Oliveros, Ben holds a Performer-Composer DMA from CalArts and has taught at CalArts and CUNY-New York City College of Technology.
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David Rothenberg has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. As a composer and jazz clarinetist, Rothenberg has at least forty albums out under his own name, including On the Cliffs of the Heart, named one of the top ten releases by Jazziz Magazine in 1995 and a record on ECM with Marilyn Crispell, One Dark Night I Left My Silent House.
Why Birds Sing is also published in England, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. It was turned into a feature length BBC TV documentary. His following book, Thousand Mile Song, is on making music with whales. It was turned into a film for French television. A fifteenth-anniversary new edition came out in 2023, called Whale Music.
His book, recording, and film Nightingales in Berlin, was published in April 2019. In 2020 it came out in German as Stadt der Nachtigallen. There is also an audiobook version read by Eva Mattes, on Spotify worldwide. In 2024 it came out in French as Un Rossignol dans la Ville. In 2024 he released Secret Sounds of Ponds, a book/music/performance initiative which reveals the unknown music beneath the surface of even the most ordinary of ponds. Right in our backyards are beautiful mysteries!
In 2024 Rothenberg also won a Grammy Award in the category of Best Boxed Set as one of the curators and musicians of For the Birds, a 20-LP set produced by Randall Poster and The Birdsong Project.
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Jane Rigler's curiosity of contemporary flute performance began during her undergraduate work at Northwestern University (B.M. 1988), by performing works composed by her peers, playing in the Contemporary Music Ensemble and her fearless exploration of performing classical 20th century composers. She went on to develop her passion for new music at the University of California, San Diego (M.M. 1991, Ph.D. 1996) performing complex new works that required the mastery of ‘extended techniques’ which are quite often actually ancient forms of playing flutes and tubes that have been incorporated into the
Through her study of phonological musical sounds that emerge from the combination of singing through the tube, she developed a variety of ways the voice can be sung through the flute by studying techniques used in many different traditions. Her international career performing edgy, complicated compositions as well as becoming a professional improviser started while living in Spain for nine years (1994-2003).
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Katie Down is a sound artist, composer, flutist, multi-instrumentalist, sound practitioner, licensed creative arts therapist, and Deep Listening® facilitator and teacher. Her music exists in the realms of sound art, free improvisation, traditional Jazz, world musics and drone-based music. Her instrumentarium includes flutes, piano, ukulele, glass percussion, hand percussion, voice, and steel cello.
She has created numerous sound scores for theatre, dance, and independent films, garnering her Drama Desk nominations and the award for best sound design from The Connecticut Critic's Circle for her work at Long Wharf Theatre and is the recipient of several grants and commissions including the NY State Rural and Traditional Arts Fellowship, The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, BAM, Watermill, Chashama, Music Omi, and Meet the Composer.
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Shawn Feeney is a multidisciplinary artist working within the realms of music and visual art. As a musician, he composes, performs, and records using a variety of instruments such as quartz bowls, tankdrums, tuning forks, strings, voices, and electronics. He crafts sonic worlds that reward deep listening and attentive immersion. His recordings include Cascades (2025), Bloom Infinitum (2021), and Thin Places (2020). He has performed at venues throughout New York City, the Hudson Valley, and the San Francisco Bay Area as a solo artist, and in ensembles such as Gamelan Kingston. He is a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Music/Sound from The New York Foundation for the Arts.
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Come Early to Elevate Your Experience with Adaptogenic Foods and Teas
Reforesters Laboratory is an experimental adaptogen cafe and sound clinic located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We utilize music – including spatial, sub-bass-centered, and organic instrumentation – along with breathwork, meditation, art, plant care and adaptogenic, nutritional foods + beverages to cultivate kindness—both physical and spiritual. We aim to create an environment that offers peace, space, and clarity, helping people understand the connections between themselves, their communities, and the world around them. To that end, we offer "pay what you can" ticket options on all events and classes.