About this Event
In an evening that puts tuning, timbre, and place at its center, two of the most inventive figures in contemporary improvised music share a single evening in Paine Hall. Curated by Claire Chase.
Trumpeter, vocalist and composer Amir ElSaffar presents his New Quartet: ElSaffar on trumpet and voice, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, Tania Giannouli on piano and Ole Mathisen on tenor saxophone. The quartet first played together in 2023 at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, a concert released in 2025 on Maqām Records; Terri Lyne Carrington joins them here on drums. For this piece, the piano is retuned to ElSaffar's own microtonal scheme, which pulls seven of the twelve pitches away from equal temperament, one by a full quarter-tone.
Percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra’s Sky Islands was awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Music and premiered at Asia Society in New York in July 2024. Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation, it is performed here by her ensemble Talking Gong (Ibarra, pianist Alex Peh, flutist Claire Chase) with guest percussionist Levy Lorenzo and the Parker Quartet. Ibarra took the piece from the broadleaf forests of northern Luzon in the Philippines, an endangered region with thirty-one endemic species, and built it on the interlocking rhythms and melodies of Kalinga and Cordilleras bamboo, gong and flute music. She has described it as a call to action on biodiversity and climate. Ibarra writes for kulintang gong sets, sarunay xylophones, drumset, gongs and cymbals, bamboo poles laid across the floor, and living plants wired with contact microphones, alongside string quartet and electronics.
There will be one 15-minute intermission.
About the Performers:
Composer, trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and bandleader Amir ElSaffar has been described in the New York Times as "the celebrated trumpeter and composer who explores vital connections between jazz and Arabic music." A recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, US Artist Fellowship, and Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, ElSaffar has earned an international reputation for his work combining jazz and western classical music with the microtonal Maqam music of Iraq and the Middle East.
His six-piece Two Rivers ensemble and 17-piece Rivers of Sound orchestra, combining Western and Arabic instrumentation and musical languages, have released five critically acclaimed albums and have toured throughout the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. ElSaffar has also composed numerous works for chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, jazz and Middle Eastern music ensembles, and transcultural works for Flamenco, Gnawa, and Raga musicians.
ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created new techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music. He was a member of Cecil Taylor's large ensembles from 2002 to 2005, and has performed in the ensembles of Archie Shepp, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, and Anthony Davis.
Additionally, ElSaffar plays the santur (Iraqi hammered dulcimer) and sings, and is one of the few living performers of the centuries-old, now endangered, Iraqi maqam tradition. In 2001, after winning the Carmine Caruso Jazz Trumpet Competition, he funded a trip to Baghdad to find and study with the few surviving masters of the Iraqi Maqam, then spent five years pursuing these masters across the Middle East and Europe.
Described as "an imaginative bandleader, expanding the vocabulary of the trumpet and at the same time the modern jazz ensemble" (All About Jazz), ElSaffar is an important voice in an age of cross-cultural music making.
****
Celebrating 40 years in music, NEA Jazz Master and four-time GRAMMY award-winning drummer, producer and educator Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career in Massachusetts at 10 years old when she became the youngest person to receive a union card in Boston. After studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music, Carrington worked as an in-demand musician in New York City, and later moved to Los Angeles, where she gained recognition on late night TV as the house drummer for both the Arsenio Hall Show and Quincy Jones' VIBE TV show.
While still in her 20s, Ms. Carrington toured extensively with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, among others. In 2011 she released the GRAMMY award-winning album The Mosaic Project, featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists, and in 2013 she released Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, which also earned a GRAMMY Award, establishing her as the first woman ever to win in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category.
To date Ms. Carrington has performed on over 100 recordings and has been a role model and advocate for young women and men internationally through her teaching and touring careers. She has toured or recorded with luminary artists such as Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Clark Terry, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Esperanza Spalding, Kris Davis, Chaka Khan, and Nancy Wilson.
In 2019 Ms. Carrington was granted The Doris Duke Artist Award. She has received honorary doctorates from Manhattan School of Music, York University and Berklee College of Music, where she currently serves as the Founder and Artistic Director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which recruits, teaches, mentors, and advocates for musicians seeking to study jazz with racial justice and gender justice as guiding principles. She is a 2022 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
****
Tania Giannouli is a Greek pianist, composer, improviser and bandleader. She studied classical music (Piano Soloist and Composition diplomas) and Agriculture (MS on Food Technology, AUA). She explores jazz as the most creative music form and regularly employs improvisation in her practice. She makes jazz of the kind where improvisation is just the starting point and somewhere out there — or something deep inside — is the aim. Her genre-defying "open sound language" is often described as lyrical, inspired, complex, eclectic, intoxicating and highly original.
Her imaginative, explorative musical nature has led to five unique recording collaborations, all released on New Zealand's foremost art-music label, Rattle Records: Forest Stories (2012, with Portuguese wind player Paulo Chagas), Transcendence (2015, featuring works composed for her Tania Giannouli Ensemble), Rewa (2018, a critically acclaimed, entirely improvised collaboration with traditional Maori instrumentalist Rob Thorne), In Fading Light (2020, an unexpected trio with trumpet player Andreas Polyzogopoulos and oud player Kyriakos Tapakis) and Solo (2023, her first solo piano album). In 2024 she was one of ten composers to contribute to the compilation album Piano Day Vol. 3 (LEITER) after an invitation of Piano Day and Nils Frahm, its founder.
She has performed at venues and festivals including Jazzfest Berlin, EFG London Jazz Festival at Wigmore Hall, Bimhuis, Rudolfinum Prague, Roulette Brooklyn, Harpa concert hall for Reykjavik Jazz festival and NYC Winter Jazz festival, but also in special projects like the demanding site-specific concert "634 minutes inside the volcano," where she — together with 14 more musicians — improvised for more than 10 hours inside the crater of Nisyros island's active volcano.
In 2026 she was included in the main category "Pianist of The Year" in the 74th DownBeat Annual Critics Poll, and in 2025 she was voted "Rising Star Pianist of the Year," being the first and only Greek musician entering these prestigious lists.
****
Ole Mathisen is a saxophonist, composer and teacher, with a strong background in jazz. He earned a Master's Degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied arranging with Maria Schneider, composition with Ed Green, and saxophone with Bob Mintzer, and he holds a Bachelor's Degree from Berklee College of Music. Ole is the Director of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program at Columbia University, where he also has been teaching saxophone and directing ensembles since 2005.
In 2020 Norsk Musikforlag published his etude collection Book of Mirrors: 18 Rhythmic and Intervallic Studies for Saxophone.
In 2013 Ole had his composition "Tone Poem: The Mind's Eye Inverted" read by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra through a program by The Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute and Earshot. The composition explores the outward communication of ideas that are instinctual, visceral, and intuitive, through lyrical musical gestures, employing in parts what Ole calls tonal fields, which are subsets of available tonal pitches that vary in each octave.
In 2010 Ole received a composer grant from Komponistenes Vederlags Fond of Norway and wrote the microtonal chamber orchestra piece "The Other Side of Night," loosely inspired by Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design.
In 2009 he was awarded Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works Grant, which resulted in Mirage, a multi-movement chamber jazz piece based on illusive rhythmic layers. Mirage premiered at Miller Theatre in New York City. It was recorded live by NPR and featured on the radio shows JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater and Jazzklubben with Erling Wicklund. Other awards include the ASCAP Plus Awards, the DANY Arts Grant from the Danish Government, and the Tono Work Stipend from the Norwegian Composers Rights Organization.
Ole has worked on over 100 CD releases and has composed several television scores.
****
Susie Ibarra is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipinx-American composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Her interdisciplinary practice includes composition, performance, mobile sound-mapping applications, multichannel audio installations, recording, and documentary.
She is the founder of Susie Ibarra Studio and, with artist-musician and engineer Jake Landau, co-founded the label and publisher Habitat Sounds. She works to support Indigenous and traditional music cultures, like musika katutubo from the Philippines, advocates for the stewardship of glaciers and freshwaters, and supports initiatives in addressing water and desert climate, and women and girls education with Joudour Sahara, Morocco.
Ibarra leads several ensembles including Talking Gong Trio with Claire Chase and Alex Peh. She has recorded over 40 albums and performed in events and venues such as Carnegie Hall; the Olympics; and the Sharjah Biennial. Her book Rhythm in Nature: An Ecology of Rhythm was released in March 2024.
Recent honors include a 2025 Pulitzer Prize in music, 2025 Creative Capital Artist Award, 2024-2025 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program fellowship, and 2024 Charles Ives Fellowship with the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2022 Music Fellow, United States Artists 2019 Music Fellow, TED Senior Fellow 2014, and National Geographic Explorers Storyteller 2020.
Sky Islands takes inspiration from the musical traditions of Luzon's sky islands and represents the Montane Forest Ecosystem through a performative sonic installation. The piece explores Ibarra's percussion sound language in extended techniques for all players, featuring Philippine Northern style interlocking rhythms and melodies found in bamboo and gong and flute music of the Kalinga and Cordilleras Region in Luzon. It is a musical call to action, highlighting Luzon's rainforests — an endangered region with 31 endemic species, including the Philippine Eagle — with the aim of connecting people to our fragile and beautiful ecosystems and drawing awareness to changing climate and global community practices.
****
Claire Chase, described by the New York Times as "the North Star of her instrument's ever-expanding universe," is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, curator, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season and as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival.
Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Kyoto Symphony, and London Philharmonia.
In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as "a quarter-century journey with little precedent." Now in its 12th year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21st century.
As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, serving as artistic director until 2017 and developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of over 1,000 new works.
A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Her discography includes eleven solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings.
****
Pianist Alex Peh, described by the Wall Street Journal as "stunning" and possessing "facility, flair and fearlessness", collaborates with musicians globally in search of shared resonances that emerge from friendship and connection. A 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar, and a 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow, Dr. Peh made his Carnegie Hall debut in January 2023 alongside improvisers Claire Chase, Tyshawn Sorey, Susie Ibarra, Senem Pirler, Matana Roberts and Lisa Harris, performing a one-hour version of Pauline Oliveros' The Witness.
Peh is part of an improvising piano trio, Talking Gong, with percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra and flutist Claire Chase. Their newest piece created by Ibarra, Sky Islands, received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in music. The debut recording will be released on Habitat Sounds, Spring 2026.
Peh travelled to Yangon, Myanmar to study Burmese Sandaya piano from master pianist Dr. U Yee Nwe. He began his studies in Sandaya from Kyaw Kyaw Naing, an internationally-acclaimed percussionist and leader of the national Saing Waing orchestra, the classical percussion and gong orchestra of Myanmar. Peh collaborated with Kyaw Kyaw Naing to create a Burmese Saing Waing ensemble, comprising students, faculty and community members at SUNY New Paltz, performing at Roulette Intermedium in 2019.
In 2021 Peh received a Fulbright Global Scholar fellowship that allowed him to connect with Greek pianist and musicologist Nikos Ordoulidis in Naoussa, Greece; Burmese pianist Ne Myo Aung in Bangkok, Thailand and Pooyan Azadeh in Bayreuth, Germany. Together they created a new album of piano music, Attune, released on Habitat Sounds, and a companion ethnographic film Intermittent Attunement.
Peh received his musical training from Indiana and Northwestern Universities where he worked with Arnaldo Cohen, Menahem Pressler, Sylvia Wang and Evelyne Brancart. He is an associate professor of piano at SUNY New Paltz, and associate chair of the music department.
****
Born in Bucharest, Filipino-American Levy Marcel Ingles Lorenzo, Jr. works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. On an international scale, his body of work spans electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, improvisation, and percussion performance. With a primary focus on inventing new instruments, he prototypes, composes, and performs new electronic music.
As an art consultant, Levy designs interactive electronics ranging from small sculptures to large-scale public art installations with artists such as Alvin Lucier, Christine Sun Kim, Ligorano/Reese, Autumn Knight, and Leo Villareal. As a musician, he has worked with artists such as Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ryuichi Sakamoto, George Lewis, Henry Threadgill, and Claire Chase. As a sound engineer, he is in demand as a specialist in the realization of complete electroacoustic concerts with nontraditional configurations.
A core member of the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), he fulfills multiple roles as percussionist, electronics performer, and sound engineer. His work has been featured at IRCAM, STEIM, REWIRE, MIT Media Lab, Harvestworks, Banff Centre, The Hermitage, Harvard University, G4TV, Grey Group, Bose, Amazon Studios, BBC, The New York Times, and Burning Man. In 2022, he made his debut as an electronic concerto soloist with the New York Philharmonic. More recently, he has had multiple engagements at Carnegie Hall as a soloist, technologist, curator, and composer.
Levy earned a Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from Stony Brook University. He has presented numerous workshops and lectures on electronic musical instrument design and performance practice. Dr. Lorenzo holds a position as Professor of Creative Technologies at The New School College of Performing Arts, where he directs the Nstrument Lab.
****
Internationally recognized for their "fearless, yet probingly beautiful" performances (The Strad), the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet (Daniel Chong, violin | Ken Hamao, violin | Jessica Bodner, viola | Kee-Hyun Kim, cello) has established itself as one of the preeminent ensembles of its generation since its founding in 2002. Renowned for their fresh interpretations of canonical works and their passionate advocacy for contemporary music, the Quartet continues to chart a dynamic artistic path rooted in both tradition and innovation.
Praised by Gramophone for playing in which "virtuosity and emotion are one," the Parker Quartet has performed for over two decades on many of the world's leading stages. Recent seasons have included appearances at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the 92nd Street Y, and Da Camera of Houston. The Quartet has also been featured at festivals including Tanglewood, Big Ears, Norfolk, Lake Champlain, Bridgehampton, and the Banff Centre.
Deeply committed to the music of our time, the Quartet has commissioned and premiered works by Augusta Read Thomas, Felipe Lara, Jaehyuck Choi, Zosha Di Castri, Paul Wiancko, Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu, Michi Wiancko, Sky Macklay, and Jeremy Gill. Past collaborators include pianists Menahem Pressler, Anne-Marie McDermott, Orion Weiss, Shai Wosner, Billy Childs, and Vijay Iyer; clarinetists and composers Jörg Widmann, Anthony McGill, and Charles Neidich; flutist Claire Chase; and violist Kim Kashkashian.
Their 2021 ECM release, featuring Dvořák's Viola Quintet with Kim Kashkashian alongside works by György Kurtág, was described by The Strad as "nothing short of astonishing." Their complete Ligeti Quartets on Naxos garnered the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.
Founded and based in Boston, the Parker Quartet serves as Professors of the Practice and Blodgett Artists-in-Residence in the Department of Music at Harvard University.
This event is part of , a university-wide initiative supported by Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA).
Photo by Tony Cenicola.
Event venue & nearby stays
John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, 3 Oxford St, Cambridge, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.