Join saxophonist Zoh Amba, bassist Nick Dunston, and drummer Chris Corsano for an immersive workshop on free improvisation. Drawing from their extensive experience in avant-garde jazz and experimental music, these visionary artists will discuss with participants their techniques for deep listening, spontaneous composition, and developing a personal approach to improvisation based on their relationship to the music's history. Through both duo and larger ensemble playing, attendees will investigate ways to create structure and form in the moment, with a strong focus on how to contribute to group dynamics while developing their individual voices. Instrumentalists and singers of various skill levels are welcome. The focus will be on fostering creativity and musical dialogue rather than technical virtuosity. Participants should bring their instruments.

Zoh Amba is a composer and instrumentalist from Tennessee residing in New York. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in a remote forest near her home alone where she started to develop her distinct sound and approach. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released her first two records in 2022. Her debut record O, Sun was produced by John Zorn and released on his prestigious label Tzadik. She has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such as Jim White (Dirty Three), legendary bassist William Parker, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Frank Rosaly or Thomas Morgan.

Nick Dunston is an acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser, and sound artist. Called an “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. His work explores notions of ancestral memory, materiality, embodiment, decolonization, and Afro-surrealism. In 2020 in collaboration with Dogbotic Labs, he co-created “Ear Re-training”, a music composition course focusing on media-bending experimental techniques and concepts. His most recent album, the Afro-surrealist-anti-opera Colla Voce, was released in April 2024 on Out Of Your Head Records. He was nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis (German Jazz Prize) in 2023 and 2024, and alongside Cansu Tanrikulu, won the SWR Jazz Prize of 2024.

Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of free improvisation, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late '90s. He's a rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of “jazz” (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen) and “rock” (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O'Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk for her Volta album and world tour, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee). Appearing on over 150 albums and touring in an ultra-wide array of collaborations, Corsano has developed a highly personal musical language through ecstatic free improvisation, extended percussion techniques, and an innovative approach to the drum kit that includes resonating drum heads with bowed strings and circular-breathed reeds. He's been called “one of the world's great drummers” by The Guardian, “a peripatetic ace of the avant-garde” by The New York Times, and “arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz” by Wire Magazine.