Modney and Ingrid Laubrock present solo works and duo improv for violin and saxophone and, Modney’s new work, Ascender. Although they have played in each other’s bands, this performance marks the acclaimed experimentalists’ first duo performance.

Josh Modney (b.1985, Albany, NY) is a violinist and composer working at the nexus of composition, improvisation, and interpretation. A highly detailed relationship to sound production on the violin is foundational to Modney’s creative practice, with a particular interest in complex timbres, Just Intonation, and in exploring the perceptual space between improvisation and notation. He has worked closely with leading composers of his generation including Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Eric Wubbels, Tristan Perich, and Rick Burkhardt, and with major figures including Kaija Saariaho, Mathias Spahlinger, Helmut Lachenmann, George Lewis, and Pauline Oliveros. Modney’s releases include Ascending Primes (Pyroclastic Records); Near to Each (Carrier Records), featuring Ingrid Laubrock, Cory Smythe, and Mariel Roberts; and Engage (New Focus); and an album of improvised chamber music with guitarist Patrick Higgins, EVRLY MVSIC (NNA Tapes). Modney is the violinist and executive director of the composer-performer collective Wet Ink Ensemble, a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and a former member and co-founder of the Mivos Quartet.

Ingrid Laubrock (b.1970, Stadtlohn, Germany) is an experimental saxophonist and composer based in Brooklyn since 2009. She is interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds. Laubrock has performed with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jason Moran, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Mary Halvorson, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, Dave Douglas, and many others. Awards include a Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation, SWR German Radio Jazz Prize, and the German Record Critics Quarterly Award. She was named Rising Star Soprano Saxophonist in the 2015 DownBeat Annual Critics Poll and Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist in 2018. Laubrock is one of the recipients of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition and has received composing commissions from the Shifiting Foundation, the Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, the Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NYSCA, Wet Ink, John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series and the EOS Orchestra.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

Image: Left: Modney, photo by Frank Heath; right: Ingrid Laubrock, photo by John Thomas

Frederick Kiesler. Study for the development chart “Creation Mutation,” from the “Correalism Manifesto,” 1947-50. Ballpen on paper, 10.8 x 13.9 (27.5 x 35.4 cm). Copyright Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna

Join for a presentation by Mark Wasiuta, curator of the exhibition Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines, as he discusses Frederick Kiesler’s (1890-1965) experimental design practice through the activities of his Laboratory for Design Correlation at Columbia University from the late 1930s to the early 1940s.

Mark Wasiuta is codirector of the Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Wasiuta is recipient of recent grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, NYSCA, and the Graham Foundation, where he was an inaugural Graham Foundation Fellow. His research exhibition practice focuses on architecture’s media, politics, and environments through under-examined projects of the postwar period. His work has been exhibited widely, including at LAXArt, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Venice Architecture Biennale, MAXXI, the Graham Foundation, and the Onassis Foundation. He is co-author and co-editor of Rifat Chadirj: Building Index (Arab Image Foundation, 2018), Dan Graham’s New Jersey (Lars Müller Publishers, 2012), and author of numerous articles. His upcoming publications include The Archival Exhibition: A Decade of Research at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery and Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

For more information on the exhibition, Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines, click here.

Join TAK Ensemble—Laura Cocks, flute; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; and Ellery Trafford, percussion—for the workshop, The Creative Score: Unconventional Notation for Unconventional Music, to examine non-traditional scores from works within TAK’s repertoire, from the physical and symbolic to the graphic and spatial.

The workshop guides participants through learning excerpts of TAK’s most theatrical, uncanny, and strange compositions. Participants will also create their own notation systems and symbologies to be performed by TAK and other workshop attendees.

Intended for a general audience of the musically curious, participants may bring an instrument, but it is not required.

TAK Ensemble is also performing at the Graham Foundation on Saturday, October 19, at 7 p.m. Since 2010, the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Additional support for this program is provided by New Music USA’s New Music Inc program and the Farny R. Wurlitzer Foundation Fund.

Founded in 2013, the New York-based TAK Ensemble has premiered hundreds of works to date, including work by composers such as Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird, Taylor Brook, Ann Cleare, Seth Cluett, Jessie Cox, Natacha Diels, Erin Gee, Bryan Jacobs, Brandon Lopez, Michelle Lou, Jessie Marino, Elaine Mitchener, Weston Olencki, Tyshawn Sorey, Eric Wubbels, Bethany Younge, and many others. They have released seven albums, including Oor (2019), which launched their in-house media label, TAK Editions. TAK has conducted residencies at Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, New York University, Oberlin Conservatory, Stanford University, and Wesleyan University. The ensemble has also collaborated with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program and Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. From 2022-­23, TAK served as the Long-Term Visiting Ensemble in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

TAK Ensemble presents works by Tyshawn Sorey, Ashkan Behzadi, Eric Wubbels, Bethany Younge, and their first group composition on October 19. They also guide a workshop on October 20.

On October 19, TAK Ensemble—Laura Cocks, flute; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; and Ellery Trafford, percussion—perform Tyshawn Sorey’s For Jaimie Branch (2022); Ashkan Behzadi’s Deseo, from Love, Crystal and Stone (2017); Eric Wubbels’ Root and Vein, from Interbeing (2023); Bethany Younge’s at midnight I walked into the middle of the desert (2019); and Artefacts (2024), composed by TAK Ensemble.

Founded in 2013, the New York-based TAK ensemble has premiered hundreds of works to date, including work by composers such as Ashkan Behzadi, David Bird, Taylor Brook, Ann Cleare, Seth Cluett, Jessie Cox, Natacha Diels, Erin Gee, Bryan Jacobs, Brandon Lopez, Michelle Lou, Jessie Marino, Elaine Mitchener, Weston Olencki, Tyshawn Sorey, Eric Wubbels, Bethany Younge, and many others. They have released seven albums, including Oor (2019), which launched their in-house media label, TAK Editions. TAK has conducted residencies at Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, New York University, Oberlin Conservatory, Stanford University, and Wesleyan University. The ensemble has also collaborated with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program and Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. From 2022-­23, TAK served as the Long-Term Visiting Ensemble in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Since 2010, the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Additional support for this program is provided by New Music USA’s New Music Inc program and the Farny R. Wurlitzer Foundation Fund.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

Visit the Graham Foundation Bookshop during the closing week of our current exhibition, Cally Spooner: Deadtime, an anatomy study. Purchases will be 20% off, with select titles discounted up to 50% off.

SALE HOURS

Saturday, June 22 12–5 p.m.
Wednesday, June 26 12–5 p.m.
Thursday, June 27 12–5 p.m.
Friday, June 28 12–6 p.m.
Saturday, June 29 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

The Graham Foundation Bookshop features a selection of publications on architecture, art, design, and related fields—many titles by the Foundation’s international network of grantees working on ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.

Designed by Ania Jaworska, the bookshop is located in the former dining room of the Madlener House, a 1902 Prairie-style mansion designed by Richard E. Schmidt and Hugh M. G. Garden in the Gold Coast neighborhood.

Image: Assaf Evron

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