A night of song, improvisation, and ritual forms, presenting some of the most distinctive voices in New York experimental music.
Ka Baird (NYC) is a performer, sound artist, and composer known for live performances that combine extended voice and microphone techniques with electronics and the psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds. Their sets are visceral and immediate, a "present-tense sound" delivered with a vigorous, ritualistic physicality that seeks “extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension.” Their solo discography spans acclaimed releases on RVNG Intl and Drag City—including 2024’s Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos—and they have brought their singular, body-driven approach to stages around the world, from Unsound Festival (Krakow) and TUSK (Newcastle) to MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, and Issue Project Room. Baird has held residencies at Pioneer Works, Roulette, and Experimental Sound Studio, and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (2023–25). For this performance, they appear in an improvised duo with bassist Henry Fraser.
Henry Fraser (NYC) has been an active presence in New York’s experimental music scene since 2014, working across a wide spectrum of collaborative and solo projects. He has performed with John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Lea Bertucci, Ka Baird, and Uniform, and toured extensively in the U.S. and abroad, appearing at Moers Festival, Unsound Festival, and Lincoln Center. Fraser’s music draws from communal, ceremonial, psychedelic, and/or religious forms, mapping improvisation onto structures that imply a value system whereby the personal histories of musician(s) themselves are salient in the work. Since 2019, he has focused on solo double bass, releasing three albums—including Breath Line (2024)—and establishing himself as one of the most distinctive voices of his generation on the instrument. In 2023, he joined Carnegie Hall’s Future Music Project as a Teaching Artist, facilitating music workshops with incarcerated youth in NYC, and in 2025 he is a music resident at both Pioneer Works and at The Stone in NYC.
Claire Dickson (Berlin) is a vocalist, improviser, and producer composing a form of song described by Mojo as “an idiosyncratic brand of ambient art pop." She considers song to be an artistically flexible modality that can encompass poetry, opera, philosophy, and any other idiom catalyzed by voice. Using microphones, pedals, synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and field recordings, she draws from lineages of improvisation, extended vocal technique, sampling, and deep listening. A key presence in experimental music communities in New York and Berlin, she has released Starland (2022) and The Beholder (New Amsterdam Records, 2024), with The Wire noting that her work “retains its glow, while seeming to grow in depth and substance"— a style described by Downbeat as "striking – at times, wordless – lyricism and melody-driven sound chamber within shapeshifting ambiance."
Cassandra Croft (NYC) writes intimate, melodic songs from dreamlike impressions, drawing on time, memory, and the natural world. NPR has called her voice “gorgeous, ethereal, [and] haunting,” a presence carried by her restrained yet expansive arrangements for piano and guitar, composed through a devoted study of songcraft and of folk, ambient, and electronic forms. She has collaborated with Rachika Nayar, Julianna Barwick, Nina Keith, and performed at venues from Knockdown Center to Zebulon—and her Randall Dunn-produced debut single “Country of Your Mind” was praised by Red Hot Org as the work of “a fully inhabited performer with an obviously exacting ear." In 2025, her voice featured prominently on Disiniblud's debut album (Domino) to critical acclaim from NPR Music and Pitchfork. For this performance, Croft is joined by NYC experimental guitarist Will Hayes (Mandy, Myrkur).
