Live transcript is available for all Fidget Zoom events.
Upcoming Events
Sean Bailey "GENERIC" album release
4:00 doors 4:30 music
General Admission: $26.50
Seniors: $21.40
Students: $5.49
Sean Bailey (Philadelphia), clarinet and electronics
Savannah Green (Philadelphia), dance
Lee Salazar (Philadelphia), trumpet
Sean Bailey, Ph.D. enjoys an active, interdisciplinary musical life in the Philadelphia area, engaging with the field of musical creativity in ever-evolving contexts: including roles as an audio engineer, composer, educator, performer, and technologist—making music at the intersection of technology and the creative spirit. Upbeatmusician.com
Savannah Green was born and raised in New York City, where she attended the famed LaGuardia High School for Music, Art & the Performing Arts as a Dance Major.
She studied at Manhattan Youth Ballet on a full merit scholarship, performing featured roles in professional level repertoire including George Balanchine’s Stars & Stripes, Emeralds, & Serenade, as well as Jerome Robbins’ Interplay.
Savannah graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2017 with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Political Science. In her final year at UCSB, she was a member of the Student Dance Company and spent the year touring internationally and performing works by José Limón, Andrea Miller, Anna Halprin, among others. During that time, Savannah was privileged to be a featured soloist in Limón’s tribute to Isadora Duncan, Dances for Isadora.
In May 2017, she travelled to New York City with the Student Dance Company to perform as part of The Radical Bodies Exhibition at Hunter College. Savannah also worked with Buglisi Dance Theater, performing new works in New York City & the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center. She also had the opportunity to perform in Jacqulyn Buglisi’s Table of Silence at UCSB as well, as in New York City. Last summer, she performed at the Vail Dance Festival in Merce Cunningham’s Antic Meet, staged by Melissa Toogood.
She spent a season as a Dance Fellow with BalletX, before being asked to join as a company member for the 2020-2021 15th Anniversary Season.
Lee Salazar is a Philadelphia-based trumpet player. His career has taken him across North America playing an arranging for touring acts such as Cory Wong and Start Making Sense, and his versatility allows him to play frequently in classical, jazz, funk, brass band, and rock environments. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Trumpet Performance from University of the Arts, where he studied under George Rabbai, Josh Lawrence, and Matt Gallagher. He also leads a rock band called almost!, for which he writes, arranges, sings, and plays both trumpet and guitar.
H-O-T series, music and dance
Following a triumphant return from a six-year hiatus, The H-O-T Series of Philadelphia announces its next installment of curated experimental performance. On Saturday, April 25, the series continues its mission as a premier incubator for "genre-defying" art, bringing together a high-caliber roster of international sound innovators and local movement artists at fidget.
7:30 doors 8:00 music
$10-20
Musicians:
Al Margolis (Chester, NY), electronics
Walter Wright (Charlottesville, VA), electro-acoustic percussion
Mia Zabelka (Vienna, Austria), violin
Flandrew Fleisenberg, percussion
Max Glazier, percussion
Abram Taber, electric bass
Dancers:
Loren Groenendaal
Kimya Imani Jackson
Chloe Marie
Kayliani Sood
Mauri Walton
Free and structured improvisation
Friday: Free and structured improvisation
7:30 doors 8:00 music
$10-20
Chris Pitsiokos (Berlin), sax
Jesse Kudler/Sequoyah Leaf, guitar and clarinet
Ben Bennett (Phila)/Kieran Daly (Chicago), percussion and guitar
Thomas Delahaye, poetry
Chris Pitsiokos is a New York-born, Berlin-based saxophonist, composer, improviser, writer and organizer. As a bandleader and soloist, he has toured throughout Asia, North and South America and Europe. His touring (as leader or co-leader) has taken him to major international festivals such as Sapporo International Arts Festival in Japan, Moers Festival in Germany, Jazz Jantar in Poland, Jazz Festival Lima in Peru, Wels Unlimited Music Festival in Austria, Jazz Festival Saalfelden in Austria, Meteo Mulhouse Festival in France, Jazz Cerkno in Slovenia, and the Observatory in Singapore. In New York, his music has been presented at Roulette Intermedium, ISSUE Project Room, in a residency at the Stone, and at countless DIY venues throughout the City. His writing has appeared in Arcana (edited by John Zorn), a Japanese-language book on Kaoru Abe, and in many articles in the now defunct Sound American, where he was on the editorial board. He has also taught workshops and lectured on his music at Rice University in Houston, University of Coimbra in Portugal, Meteo Mulhouse Festival in France, and Sound Disobedience Festival in Ljubljana. Some of his projects are: solo saxophone performance, a constantly evolving audio-visual electro-acoustic piece “Irrational Rhythms and Shifting Poles”, his band CP Unit and a longstanding duo with Otomo Yoshihide. He has also performed with Axel Dörner, Keiji Haino, Mazen Kerbaj, Tony Buck, Wendy Eisenberg, Nate Wooley, Miya Masaoka, Paul Lytton, Peter Evans, Weasel Walter, Jaimie Branch, Chris Corsano, Oli Steidle, Luke Stewart, Elias Stemeseder, and Tyshawn Sorey.
He has recorded around 40 albums as a leader or co-leader and appear on many more.
As an organizer, he has presented over 100 concerts independently in New York from 2013 until 2022 when he relocated to Berlin. In Berlin he co-curated the program at Sowieso in 2022 and 2023 before co-founding a new venue, Richten25 and its parent-verein Odamusic e.V. in 2024. In 2025 he founded the Hard Listening Festival–a Festival for adventurous music/non-music in Berlin.
Sequoyah Leaf and Jesse Kudler are an improvising chamber skronk clarinet and guitar duo active since 2024.
Maine-to-Philadelphia transplant Sequoyah Leaf plays reeds/electronics with a deep love of bird calls and feedback.
Jesse Kudler is a musician, composer, performer, and sound artist whose current primary focus is improvised acoustic and electric guitar, played fingerstyle without effects processing. Drawing from pianists and saxophonists in addition to guitarists, his approach reflects vocabulary and syntax from free jazz and free improvisation, minimalism, microtonal music, electronic and concrete music, drone, and noise.
Kieran Daly is an American composer and guitarist with concentration in experimental monophonic music. His work has been presented by Artists Space, Cafe OTO, Default Den Haag, Issue Project Room, Liverpool Biennial, Museum of Modern Art, Non-Event, Pilar Brussels, Pioneer Works, Pitchfork, Triple Canopy, and Wire Magazine, among others. His prolific recorded output can be found on Hibari, Marginal Frequency, Party Perfect, Tokinogake, Infant Tree, and Madacy Jazz, his central digital & print imprint co-operated with Sam Sfirri since 2014. He has also provided soundtracks to several features and shorts by the Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina, including 88:88 (2015), Inventing the Future (2020), He Thought He Died (2023), and Gangsterism (2025).
Ben Bennett is a percussionist who makes timbrally and formally diverse music from simplified instruments in the membranophone and idiophone families. His focus is on drawing out idiosyncratic sounds and structures from limited means. His latest work, Music for Idiophones, deals with dynamic stick-slip behaviour of various basic materials. He has toured extensively throughout the Americas and Europe and performed in several international festivals as a soloist and in improvising ensembles. His recent collaborators include Pascal Battus, Kieran Daly, Axel Dörner, Philipp Eden, Jonas Engel, Bryan Eubanks, Sandy Ewen, Carlos Hidalgo, Beat Keller, Greg Kelley, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Carina Khorkhordina, Alexander Markvart, Karen Ng, Chris Pitsiokos, Ernesto Rodrigues, Guillherme Rodrigues, Asger Thomsen, Ute Wasserman, Jacob Wick, Nate Wooley, and Jack Wright.
Thomas Delahaye is the author of several books of poetry and runs Intrinsic Coat. Instagram: @intrinsic_coat. He also co-runs Each Books with Mark Francis Johnson. Both of these individuals live in Philadelphia
Vervet Dance Semi-Composed
This evening curated by Vervet Dance director Loren Groenendaal includes two dance works directed by Groenendaal and one from Adam Kerbel, which are semi-composed, meaning partially pre-composed and partially open to improvisation in the moment. Semi-composed work has a balance of agency between the directors planning the artistry in advance and the performers expressing in the moment, which leads to an incredible synergy for composition with focus, presence, and ephemerality.
Groenendaal will be presenting Be[ ]ing, which is inspired by Nancy Stark Smith's participatory Underscore, reframing it for performance. This iteration will include dancers Miryam Coppersmith, Paul Matteson, Abigail Mosier, Michelle Stortz and saxophonist Steve Davit. This emergent composition explores beginnings, embodiment, presence, rapport, and developing within the unknown.
Groenendaal will also present Render, which explores many meanings of the word, render - to repeat, to give back, to return, to restore, to reduce, and to represent. The performance is made and remade through repetition, reaction, re-creation by the performers Groenendaal and dancers Miryam Coppersmith, Curt Haworth, Abigail Mosier, Leigh Huster and musician Steve Davit.
Performing artist Adam Kerbel will also be contributing a new dance work, Living/edge to the evening in response to a mother’s passing and the politics of play through improvisation, percussion, and memory problems. This performance will use some recorded sound material gathered by Joshua Cabitac.
Vervet Dance is a Philadelphia-based contemporary dance company directed by Loren Groenendaal. The dance works draw on both the legacy of modern dance and cross-cultural influences to create innovative movement vocabularies and imaginative choreographies. Vervet strikes a unique balance between classic forms, new ideas, and ancient purposes for dance. Although subject matter varies, what is characteristic of the company is an ongoing intellectual diligence meeting a curious playfulness and an exploration of the visual, visceral, and musical components of dance. Vervet Dance’s Semi-Composed series provides a platform for unique work that is partially set and partially improvised.
Website: https://www.vervetdance.org/ IG handle: @vervetdance
Loren Groenendaal (they/she) is dancer, improviser, choreographer, curator, and movement educator who lives on Lenape land known as Philadelphia. Loren was born in rural central Pennsylvania and nurtured on a forested mountain in the ancestral homeland of the Susquehannock. She has been actively creating, curating, and presenting work in Philadelphia and beyond since 2003. Loren is the founder, artistic director, and choreographer for Vervet Dance. Much of the work is interdisciplinary, collaborative, references patterns in nature, and investigates the community building possibilities of live art, the spectrums between improvisation and composition, and between ritual and performance. Movement vocabulary draws influence from Loren’s experience with varied dance forms of modern, Balinese, social, breakin’ and contact improvisation. Loren’s work has been performed from Canada to Mexico and many places in between and has been supported by multiple venues and organizations including Abington Art Center, CEC, fidget, FringeArts, Green Space, Movement Research, and more.
Loren has co-produced concert series providing opportunities for dance/theatre work in the round through Making the Rounds (2017), for dance work that is partially set and partially improvised through Semi-Composed (2017, 2023, 2026) and for freely improvised music and dance via The H-O-T Series of Philadelphia (2013-2019, 2026-) and Free Float (2023-2024). Notable works of Groenendaal’s choreography include colorFULL (2014), a series of music dance/duets each exploring individual colors with sculptural costumes and original music, BOING! (2015), a collaboration with percussionist Flandrew Fleisenberg for a cast of performers blurring the lines between dance and music working with a thousand ping pong balls and a dozen pots and pans, In the Light (2018), a durational exploration of natural rhythms and for a large cast of musician/dancers from sunrise to sunset once a season, and most recently Quartet for the End of Time (2024), a contemporary dance set to Olivier Messiaen’s work of the same title, resisting facism via eco-somatics and mysticism. Education: MFA in Choreography: University of North Carolina at Greensboro; BA: Oberlin College; CMA: The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies.
Steve Davit is a world-touring saxophonist, vocalist, producer and creativity coach. Improv is a big part of his life and work, using it as the creative fuel for every project. When he's not on tour with electro-pop duo Marian Hill or taking care of his two young children, Steve can be found making and mixing music in his home studio in Havertown, PA. You can find more about Steve and his latest musical releases on his website. Education: Drexel University.
Website: stevedavitmusic.com IG handle:@stevedavitmusic
Adam Kerbel (he/him/el) spans dance, improvisation, and hybrid forms as tools for reflection and action. Based in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, he established Performa Choreographic to support independent artists through a community approach. The next Performa runs April 4-26 in Philly. Previous presentations: Philadelphia Dance Projects, Cannonball, NYLA, Jacob’s Pillow, Music Center, Skirball LA, WIP-LA, and Breaking Walls in Cairo, Egypt. Education: Headlong Performance Institute; Marymount Manhattan. Website: www.adamkerbel.com IG handle: @adam_kerbel
Josh Cabitac is a drummer, composer, and producer based in Los Angeles. His principal aim is to arouse action for causes of liberation and inspire agitation over sedation, through music and other forms of cultural work. Cabitac frequently records and tours with the band, Moon Panda. Education: Berkeley College of Music.
MORE INFORMATION: https://www.facebook.com/share/1DckYet3iF/
Carvalho/Hart/Bennett/Tether/Yanu/K
Friday March 27th Marina Carvalho and Zach Hart from Berlin will stop here for a show with Ben Bennett, and Tether, with readings by two local poets Myene Yanu and Emily K.
BIOS
Lauren Pakradooni (Tether) is an interdisciplinary artist who creates visual art and music that uses pattern and interference to reflect slippages between the built and natural worlds. Pakradooni has been making music under the monikers Tether, Pak, and her own name. Her sound is structured by cassette tape loops that carry fragments of recorded sound into assemblages of wavering structures. Pakradooni layers and manipulates loops to build patterns that carve out specific song formation through the rhythm of each loop’s physical revolution. Her sound takes on space through density and sparseness that either reveal or bury the process of making.
Pakradooni will perform live tape manipulation on a suite of cassette tape recorders using handmade cassette tape loops with field, analog, and digital sources.
Ben Bennett (b. 1984 Columbus, Ohio) is a percussionist who makes timbrally and formally diverse music from simplified instruments in the membranophone and idiophone families. Coming from an early background in jazz, in the 2000’s he began reducing the drumset to its constituent elements, and focusing on drawing out idiosyncratic sounds from limited means. Reducing sonic material to nothing led to the durational YouTube series Sitting and Smiling (2014-ongoing), and applying iterative process to ordinary language led to Walking and Talking (2017-ongoing). His latest work, Music for Idiophones, deals with dynamic stick-slip behaviour of various flexible materials. He has toured extensively throughout the Americas and Europe and performed in several international festivals as a soloist and in improvising ensembles. His recent collaborators include Pascal Battus, Kieran Daly, Axel Dörner, Philipp Eden, Jonas Engel, Bryan Eubanks, Sandy Ewen, Carlos Hidalgo, Beat Keller, Greg Kelley, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Carina Khorkhordina, Alexander Markvart, Karen Ng, Chris Pitsiokos, Ernesto Rodrigues, Guillherme Rodrigues, Asger Thomsen, Ute Wasserman, Jacob Wick, Nate Wooley, and Jack Wright.
Mariana Carvalho and Zach Hart are a Berlin based duo working in between experimental music, noise, radio and sound art.
They will present a new set together, combining binaural mics, transducers, glass, modular synthesizer and a tape deck.
Myene Yanu is a poet from Oakland, CA living in Philadelphia, PA. Her work can be found in Beautiful Days Press’s Works & Days Vol.2, Peel Lit Vol.2, and Peace Isn’t Luck.IG:@myene.tsty
Emily K. is the author of Baby I'm Away at the maze and laughterhouse.
Flandrew Fleisenberg’s unretirement show!+id m theft able+Bhob Rainey+DJ Robo Rob
What: Flandrew Fleisenberg’s unretirement show!+id m theft able+Bhob Rainey+DJ Robo Rob
When: Saturday March 21st, 2026 Doors open at 7:30 pm, music at 8 pm
Where: fidget space, 1714 N. Mascher St., Phila
$10-20 suggested
Flandrew Fleisenberg is a practitioner of chance and uncertainty. While drums exist at the periphery of his work, he is primarily invested in coaxing out the inherent material characters of mundane things. Through the wide manipulation of external implements, Fleisenberg constructs an aural architecture that responds to the physical movement of the embodied performer within the space. He is intrigued by rhythms that originate from natural phenomena, activated through material conjuring to create an evocative discourse within a constantly breathing, tactile environment.
Fleisenberg plays percussion on an ever-changing assortment of ephemera, surfacing textures and tones that range from the familiar to the bizarre. Attentive to room acoustics, organic resonance, collaborator, and the presence of the audience, he playfully utilizes physical phenomena—precession, gravity, angular momentum, friction, and chaos—to explore the relationships between space and time. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) with a focus on conceptual art, Fleisenberg is a self-taught musician who has developed a singular cadre of idiosyncratic techniques.
A fixture in the experimental and non-idiomatic free improvisation community since 2001, he has performed solo and in collaborative groupings across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Currently based in Philadelphia and following a nine-year hiatus, Fleisenberg has returned to the experimental scene, bringing a renewed focus to the evocative discourse between the performer, the object, and the breathing space.
https://lifeoffleisenberg.blogspot.com/
Id M Theft Able is a composer, musician and performer active within and without the realms of avant-improvisation, noise, sound poetry, sound art and performance art using extended vocal techniques, found objects, homemade instruments, various electronics, and whatever else is he might happen to find useful in the moment.
He has given well over a thousand performances across 4 continents in over 40 different countries in settings ranging from the filthiest of basements to the fanciest of festivals and has over 100 album releases (both solo and collaborative) to his name.
https://idmtheftable.bandcamp.com/
https://www.kraag.org/
Bhob Rainey is a Philadelphia-based composer, saxophonist, and sound designer celebrated for his innovative contributions to contemporary, experimental, and improvised music. A recipient of the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts and co-founder of the influential improvisational duo nmperign, Rainey has garnered acclaim for his groundbreaking work across disciplines, including collaborations in theater, dance, and visual art. With performances and commissions spanning prestigious venues and festivals worldwide, his work continuously challenges boundaries of musical thought and instrumental technique.
https://bhobrainey.bandcamp.com/
https://nmperign.bandcamp.com/
http://bhobrainey.com/
Trepanations at fidget featuring Taji Ra'oof Nahl and Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth
Taji Ra'oof Nahl, also known as TR7, is a conceptual artist and 2024 Guggenheim Fellow recognized for his innovative staged productions that blend audio and visual media across various settings, including museums and public spaces. His series "Abstract Dynamics" features collaborative projects that explore a fusion of improvisation, experimental sounds, jazz, cinematic elements, and hip hop traditions.
Nate Totushekis a Philadelphia-based vibrational mode specialist, blending deep tonal texturing with minimalist cyclic iterationing to achieve maximum spaciotemporal lubrication.
SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH:
Matt Englegrew up in the Philadelphia area and has been an active member of the creative and improvised music scene for 20 years. Matt defies categorization seamlessly moving among different styles and disciplines his work extends to the world electronic music, featured on his recording with poet Michael Szekely under the name of The Alternative View recently Matt recorded with the Chad Taylor quintet for a release on Otherly Love records and titled smoke shifter his love of the acoustic bass matches the intimacy of the pairing of his mind and body to this particular instrument his deep interest in birds waves unique people esoteric sounds the moon and all celestial objects helps to increase the emotional spiritual and creative content of his work in music.
He has contributed to many situations in music previously performing and or recording with Chad Taylor, Bobby Zankel, Sonic Liberation Front, Shot By Shot, Yapp, Split Red, Dave Liebman, Marshall Allen, Sam Newsom, Rick Lannacone, Jamie Branch, Elliott Levin, Anthony Pirog, Raymond King, David Middleton, Dan Blacksburg, Vince Johnson Muhammad Ali, Oliver Lake, Tim Berne, Thurman Barker and Brandon Seabrook among many others.
Dave McDonnellgot his start in Chicago’s thriving rock and jazz underground. Cutting his teeth with Elephant 6 adjacent groups like bablicon and Icy Demons, McDonnell went on to form the avant/synth-rock group Michael Columbia. He is likely best known in Chicago as a founding member of the group Herculaneum, a critically acclaimed unit with a five-album discography. David’s work combining afro-beat with jazz and his electronic compositions has found an outlet with Dave McDonnell Group, whose album, the time inside a year, can be found on the Delmark record label.
Bryan Rogersis a Philadelphia based Brian Rogers is a Philadelphia based saxophonist in addition to his own projects he plays with the Chad Taylor Quintet and Bobby Zankel's Wonderful Sound 5.
H-O-T Series of Philadelphia
After a 6 year hiatus, the H-O-T Series of Philadelphia is officially back!
Originally debuted in 2013, H-O-T is a curated space for improvisational movement, experimental sound, and boundary-pushing performance. Curators Loren Groenendaal and Flandrew Fleisenberg are thrilled to bring this series back to the community, featuring a mix of incredible local talent.
D.M. HOTEP/JAIR- RÔHM PARKER WELLS+SIGNAL SPECTRUM
Next Saturday, Dec. 13: D.M. HOTEP/JAIR- RÔHM PARKER WELLS+SIGNAL SPECTRUM
Doors 7:30 Music 8:00 10-20$ suggested donation
Trepanation Presents at fidget
This week the Trepanation series comes to fidget!
Trepanation Presents began in the fall of 2022 as a seasonal concert series at Century Bar in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry. For 3 years now founders David McDonnell and Matt Engle have been steadily showcasing everything from experimental free jazz and electronica to forward thinking indie-rock. Trepanation is excited at this new collaboration with fidget space and looks forward to bringing the best of Philadelphia’s progressive tendencies to the band stand.
Toshi Makihara
Toshi Makihara pursues non-idiomatic free improvised music using percussion and found objects / sound sites. Makihara studied drums and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi and Butoh with the master Kazuo Ohno in Tokyo. His approach to free improvisation is founded on the process of “Becoming the Sound” without seeking any particular accomplishment.
Nick Millevoi
Nick Millevoi is a guitarist and composer whose personal sound reflects the full history of electric guitar music, from early rock & roll and surf music through noise and the avant-garde. With his band, Desertion Trio, Nick has released four full-length albums on the Cuneiform, Long Song, and Shhpuma/Clean Feed labels, which have been called “potently surreal” (Rolling Stone), “a nonstop instrumental thrill-ride” (Aquarium Drunkard), and “supremely weird desert noir” (Noisey). His most recent releases are Digital Reaction, featuring guests that include Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Lushlife, and Jason Nazary, and The Sounds of Grassy Sound with Ron Stabinsky, featuring a guest performance by the Meat Puppets.
“When Nick Millevoi plays the guitar, it's like a rocket darting skyward between clouds.” —NPR Music
David McDonnell
Philadelphia resident David McDonnell got his start in Chicago’s thriving rock and jazz underground. Cutting his teeth with Elephant 6 adjacent groups like bablicon and Icy Demons, McDonnell went on to form the avant/synth-rock group Michael Columbia. Dave McDonnell’s 5th World is a project which combines woodwinds, computer music and modular synthesizers to create ambient textures, riffs and basslines which are synced with electronic drums and live percussion. 5th World released the album Mammals in 2023 on Astrolabe Recordings. One of the goals with this project is to place algorithm-based electronic music into the broader cultural and stylistic contexts of free jazz, electronic dance and world music.
Saturday December 6th, doors 7:30 music 8:00. $10-20 suggested
4 sets of experimental electronic music!
RM Francis joins us from Seattle, alongside locals Eric Laska, Dave Smolen and Patrick Gallagher for a night of experimental electronic music.
$10-$20 recommended donation
Bios:
RM Francis is an artist based in Seattle working with computer-generated sound and language via recording, installation, and performance. His practice foregrounds computation-based compositional strategies, focusing on methods that exploit discrepancies between human and artificial auditory systems. His current work exploits latent phonological data extracted from non-linguistic sound in order to generate the tonal, rhythmic, and semantic content of synthesized speech. The resulting asubjective narration articulates the potentialities of speech decoupled from embodied human expression, navigating between abstract sound and uncanny characterological specificity.
His oeuvre spans multimedia work incorporating sound, video, performance, and chocolate (Hyperplastic Other, 2017), investigations of historical computer synthesis methods (A Taxonomy of Guffaws, 2020), procedural text works for a chorus of synthetic voices (Every Single Person Has Some Muscle, 2022), and hallucinatory duets between dictation apps and deep learning networks (pedimos un mensaje, 2023). In addition to his solo projects, in recent years he has collaborated with Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher, Jung An Tagen, and farmersmanual, among others.
Eric Laska is a musician and artist based in Philadelphia whose projects mostly take shape as sound installation, performance, or original songwriting. He is founding editor of the online audio journal Lateral Addition (lateraladdition.org) which seeks to enrich the conversations surrounding contemporary sound practices. Between 2018 - 2020 he co-ran the sound and media arts gallery Remote Viewing in Philadelphia with Geoff Mullen. His last two recordings of songs, Original Songs and the Relief EP, can be found online atericlaska.bandcamp.com.
Dave Smolen has been a part of various scenes, projects and eras of Philadelphia noise since 2003.
For nearly the first half of that time, he played as a solo artist and released his first composition Malleable Laminates in 2006, a multitrack composition for processed snare drums and electronics. The release served as the groundwork for his ever evolving hardware setups from guitar pedals to modular and later condensed to synth sequencing.
After 12 years away from solo work Smolen returned to his original mode and picked up where he left off. The past 3 years have been a process of connecting methods learned in collaboration and in the phases of his music prior.
Patrick Gallagher is a sound artist currently based in Philadelphia, PA. With a formal education in mathematics, Gallagher employs generative/algorithmic processes, guided improvisation, and intuitive sound collage in an effort to weave evocative and evolving sonic narratives. Exploring the various developments of 20th century composition and contemporary computer music, he seeks to fuse that technicality with the cathartic and rapturous nature of the DIY noise underground.
Previous works employed a wide range of sound sources - synthesizers, field recordings, tabletop guitar, etc. - however, Gallagher currently focuses almost entirely on digital synthesis, particularly additive and granular techniques.
Gallagher has released albums on cassette, vinyl, and CD through Enmossed, ENXPL (enmossed x Psychic Liberation), No Rent Records, Hot Releases, Refulgent Sepulchre, Tone Log, and other independent labels.
3 sets of improvisational music
Free Improv at fidget!
Come out and listen to 3 sets of prime Philadelphia free improv:
Henry Allen/Jonah Gelbart - guitar and trumpet
Philadelphia based musicians Henry Allen and Jonah Gelbart have been playing freely improvised music as a duo for the last several years. Henry Allen is a guitarist whose playing incorporates experimental punk ideas with rapidly evolving and abrasive harmonic textures. Jonah Gelbart plays various trumpets and shofar, combining his training in classical and jazz with a personal experimental language. They prefer a playful approach to music-making that emphasizes social interaction over directly aesthetical considerations.
Lance Simmons - electronics
Lance Howard Simmons is a self-taught percussionist and multi-disciplinary artist from the North American South residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His other notable musical endeavors include The Playful Bunch, Slack, Mirror Men, and Unguent." https://refulgentsepulchre.bandcamp.com/album/fractal-discharge
Jack Wright/Ben Wright - bass and alto saxophone
Jack Wright is a veteran saxophone improviser based mainly in Philadelphia, regularly touring North America and Europe the past four decades and well known to improvisers. Continually seeking out interesting partners and playing situations, Wright is one of the originals of American free improv, and now at 81 he is still the "Johnny Appleseed of Free Improvisation," as the late Davey Williams (guitarist) called him in the 80s.
Ben Wright from Dixon, New Mexico plays double bass. He cut his teeth in Philadelphia punk rock, and has since been working the double bass for 30 odd years, bolstered by intense spats of incidental formal training. A lover of the lowest frequencies, Ben has explored many disparate forms of music through the bass, yet always returns to the wellspring of improvisation.
recommended $10-$20 at the door - no one turned away for lack of funds
Bach Cello Suite No. 3 at Philly Art Museum 7/12
Mother and son duo Megan Bridge and Tristan Price are collaborating on "The Bach Cello Suites Project" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where they will perform the third of Bach's six cello suites. Megan, a dancer and choreographer, will use improvisational movement while Tristan, a cellist, offers a fresh interpretation of the piece. The performance will be in the Great Stair Hall and is free with the price of museum admission.
Vector
Vector is a suite of dance works comprising a 360 VR film, interactive immersive installation, and a live performance work using avatars and custom-built audio-visual effects to highlight embodied attention. Named as the audience favorite in Doc Edge XR 2024 festival in New Zealand, Vector has been enjoyed by audiences in France, Columbia, Peru, Argentina, Australia, Canada, USA, Bulgaria, and more.
Don't Touch!
Don’t Touch
Interactive and Multimedia Art Exhibition by Boyer College Graduate Music Technology Students
A showcase of interactive, immersive, and performative multimedia artworks blurring the lines between physical and virtual. Explore word games and mythologized pasts— human smoothie simulations and introspective improvisations— meditative visualizations and a razor blade piano. Touch… or maybe don’t.
Dance Showing
works by rece komorn + meg hasou, nailah murray, lucienne parker, luna rous
december 6th and 7th, 7:00pm
fidget
1714 n mascher st
philadelphia. pa
RSVP link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqkdbFPzRtMsbvE84rcZb65sXuPkII5fohNj0-D6wPUlhHgw/viewform
Tom Hamilton - Al Margolis Duo
TOM HAMILTON has composed and performed electronic music for over 50 years, and his work with electronic music originated in the late-60s era of analog synthesis. He is a Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and participated in a residency at the foundation’s center in Umbria. Hamilton’s performing and recording colleagues have included Peter Zummo, Bruce Gremo, Bruce Arnold, Anna Pangalou, Rich O’Donnell, Thomas Buckner, Al Margolis, id m theft able, and Thessia Machado, and he has also performed with Composers Inside Electronics. Hamilton has released 16 CDs of his music and his CD London Fix received an award in the Prix Ars Electronica He was the co-director of the 2004 Sounds Like Now festival, and he co-produced the Cooler in the Shade/Warmer by the Stove new music series in New York for 14 years. Hamilton is currently serving as the music director for five operas by (the late) composer Robert Ashley, and has been a member of that company for 30 years. His audio production is found on over 100 recordings of prominent contemporary musicians.
AL MARGOLIS was a leader in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music and was co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Active under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition. Margolis continues to collaborate live with video artist Katherine Liberovskaya and performs as an electronic/acoustic duo with Tom Hamilton. Other recent projects include duos with Walter Wright (Elka Bong) and Tom Law (Duo Denum).
Perfect Lives
Open Music performs a new arrangement of three episodes from Robert Ashley’s legendary TV Opera Perfect Lives. Ashley’s Opera, first aired on the UK’s Channel 4 in 1983, is a trance-like journey in music, words, and video through the many-layered soul of America – “these are songs about the corn belt, some of the people in it, or on it.” Open Music, an experimental music collective from central Pennsylvania, brings their unique sound and style and instrumentation (voices, percussion, bass, dulcimer, synthesizer, harmonium and flute) to bear on new original arrangements of the first, third and seventh episodes (“The Park: Privacy Rules”, “The Bank: Victimless Crime”, “The Backyard: T’be Continued”). Perfect Lives is unlike anything it could possibly be compared to, and opportunities to see it live are rare to say the least. Open Music is excited, and grateful to the Ashley estate, to have the opportunity to bring this visionary epic to life on multiple stages in the northeast this fall.
Open Music Ensemble
Tara Toms, voice
Jessie Pierce, voice/flute
Nico Gargiulo, voice/harmonium
Chunyuan Di, dulcimer
Corey Elbin, synthesizer
Tommy Gargiulo, bass
Kevin Sims, percussion
Beautiful Human Lies, Chapter 4, Work in Progress Showing
Preview a work-in-progress of a 2025 Fringe show!
September 12, 7pm
FringeArts
140 North Columbus Blvd
https://phillyfringe.org/events/beautiful-human-lies-chapter-4-work-in-progress-showing/
Rennie Harris and Megan Bridge first worked on a version of this dance in 1999. 25 years later, this new work is a conversation about race, cultural appropriation, privilege, and the passage of time—choreographed by Harris and performed by Bridge.
Bach Cello Suites Project: Suite #2
August 16, 6:30pm and 17th, 1:00 & 2:30pm, catch Megan Bridge and Tristan Price’s performance of Bach’s Cello Suite #2 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art! Saturday’s performances will be followed by an audience reception and chat.
Widening the Circle: A week-long intensive movement workshop with Megan Bridge
This class will guide students into deep embodiment, heightening perception and using all their senses. Formal dance training is not required, but participants should be comfortable in their bodies and, ideally, have some kind of regular physical practice. Mornings will center on getting embodied through stretching and hands-on bodywork, and in the afternoons we will dance and improvise.
Max/MSP Meetup
Max Meetup — Philadelphia
April 15, 2024
7pm ET
Fidget Space
1714 N. Mascher Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
RSVP Required : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/max-meetup-philadelphia-tickets-875353555047
Max Meetup Philadelphia is a regular meeting to share ideas and strengthen the connections of the Philadelphia community of Max users, digital artists and musicians. Each meetup will feature workshops, conversations, and open work-shares focusing on art-making, Max, and digital technologies. All experience levels are welcome to attend. Attendees are encouraged to bring their computers if they wish to patch along with the workshops.
This Meetup will feature a performance and patch-along demo by Cerulean S. Payne-Passmore, who will share a gesture-controlled laptop feedback instrument and how to build your own in Max. Cerulean is a Philly-based composer and improviser studying at the University of Pennsylvania with Tyshawn Sorey.
This event is free and open to the public.
Max Meetup Philadelphia is organized by Sam Wells, a musician, video artist, and Max Certified Trainer based in Philadelphia.
Support provided by Fidget.
April Max Meetup
Philadelphia Max/MSP User Group with special guest Paula Matthusen
RSVP Required : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/max-meetup-philadelphia-tickets-869310560287
Max Meetup Philadelphia is a regular meeting to share ideas and strengthen the connections of the Philadelphia community of Max users, digital artists and musicians. Each meetup will feature workshops, conversations, and open work-shares focusing on art-making, Max, and digital technologies. All experience levels are welcome to attend. Attendees are encouraged to bring their computers if they wish to patch along with the workshops.
This Meetup will feature a demonstration and presentation by Paula Matthusen, a composer and performer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations using Max. Matthusen is currently Professor of Music at Wesleyan University.
This event is free and open to the public.
Max Meetup Philadelphia is organized by Sam Wells, a musician, video artist, and Max Certified Trainer based in Philadelphia.
Fidget at Manfred Fischbeck Memorial Salon
Fidget co-directors Megan Bridge (dance) and Peter Price (electronic music) will be joined by dancer Lesya Popil. The three will perform an improvisation at a very special iteration of Andrea Clearfield’s salon, dedicated to the memory of Manfred Fischbeck. Megan, Peter, and Lesya were both long time collaborators of Manfred’s and are grateful to participate in this memorial performance.
Kimmel Center Work-In-Progress Showing
Fidget is commissioning choreographer Rennie Harris to choreograph a new solo work for Fidget’s co-director, Megan Bridge. Megan and Rennie will be sharing the work in progress at a free, informal showing on Friday, March 15, 6pm, at the Kimmel Center’s Innovation Studio.
Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, our participating scholar on this project, will also be in attendance and will offer questions for reflection at the event.
Register here: https://www.ensembleartsphilly.org/events-and-tickets/2023-24/free/dance-studio-rehearsal-residency/
Support the project here: https://fidget.app.neoncrm.com/donation.jsp?campaign=72&
Max Meetup — Philadelphia
RSVP Required (www.eventbrite.com/e/max-meetup-philadelphia-tickets-828538730647)
Max Meetup Philadelphia is a regular meeting to share ideas and strengthen the connections of the Philadelphia community of Max users, digital artists and musicians. Each meetup will feature workshops, conversations, and open work-shares focusing on art-making, Max, and digital technologies. All experience levels are welcome to attend. Attendees are encouraged to bring their computers if they wish to patch along with the workshops.
This Meetup will feature a demonstration and presentation by Aeroidio (Adam Vidiksis and Sam Wells) on a recent web that integrates machine learning and RNBO generated audio. Working in collaboration with the Little Artists League in Tokyo, Japan, a global-minded art organization devoted to fostering children’s creativity through process-oriented art, Aeroidio has developed a web application that transforms camera and gestural data from a mobile device, turning it into an interactive musical instrument that nearly anyone can play.
Following, Aeroidio, Wells will lead a workshop highlighting the exciting, new features in the most recent release of Max, version 8.6.
This event is free and open to the public.
Max Meetup Philadelphia is organized by Sam Wells, a musician, video artist, and Max Certified Trainer based in Philadelphia.
Support provided by Fidget.
The Backyard
“Art is a game between all people of all periods.” —Marcel Duchamp
The Backyard was developed in a residency with Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson at their studio on Mad Brook Farm in Vermont in summer 2017 and 2018. Performed by Megan Bridge and Beau Hancock, this 45 minute improvised dance proposes a hyper-conscious inhabiting of time, space, and relationship; a radical invitation for intimacy and embodiment. Placing Paxton/Nelson’s work PA RT (1978-2002) at the center of our research, The Backyard exists in a landscape of deep listening and rigorous attention. With music by Robert Ashley, this new work is also a palimpsest of PA RT—an effaced manuscript, written over, but still bearing traces of its original form.
The Bach Cello Suites Project
The Bach Cello Suites Project
Mother and son duo, dancer Megan Bridge and 15-year-old cellist Tristan Price, will perform the first of Bach’s six cello suites. Megan’s experimental, improvisational approach moves within Bach’s tightly woven structure, and her dancing draws attention to Tristan’s fresh interpretation of this well-loved piece of music.
Performances in the Great Stair Hall at 1:30 and 3:30
Altered States: a performance conversation with Megan Bridge and Zornitsa Stoyanova
Megan Bridge and Zornitsa Stoyanova are both award winning and critically acclaimed performers and choreographers. They are both women, mothers, and people who are perhaps obsessed with the concept of “presence” in performance. Collectively, they have spent more than thirty years researching this topic.
In this performance conversation, they propose that “performance presence” is, in fact, an altered state of consciousness. They discuss, demonstrate, and explore their own techniques, compositional tools, and physical practices for creating altered states. Zornitsa and Megan’s performance suggests different ways of being in the world, challenging neuro-normative modes of perception and being. They center these “presencing” practices as survival tactics, or strategies to help navigate the dailyness/deadliness of everyday life.
Spring Modern Dance Technique Class series begins
Philly! Let’s Dance! We’re thrilled to announce a new 8 week early summer series. FRIDAYS @10AM - 11AM Modern Dance Technique Class. This class is co-taught by artistic collaborators Kate Seethaler and Meghan Frederick at Fidget Space on an alternating weekly schedule. Class is designed to get you moving with juicy floorwork, sweet tunes, snappy phrases, and experiments in improvisation and imagination. Come one, come all, tell your friends! All levels welcome.
Photo credit Jessica Brown
Special for this series we have new class cards! Want to know you’re taking class every Friday in May/June? Pre-pay all 8 classes for just $10 per class! Pre-pay 4 classes for $12 per class! Drop ins for $15 per class. Message or follow @carnivore_a.dance.performance for who’s teaching when and info for how to purchase class cards!