Friday: Free and structured improvisation
7:30 doors 8:00 music
$10-20
Chris Pitsiokos (Berlin), sax
Jesse Kudler/Seqouyah 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