I learned to play the tuba by hiding my body - literally behind 30 pounds of brass machine, and figuratively under beautiful tone. In this residency, I pursue threads of expression that have been working their way through my recent practice: an emphasis on internal process and difficulty, the pursuit of duration and endurance, and a conceptual approach to the instrument as a mechanism to be taken apart and modified. The performance will incorporate electronics and extensions, as well as some (hopefully) beautiful tone, as it navigates the boundaries between organs and machines.

The loom is a technology that’s easy to overlook—an innovation too ancient and quotidian to be appreciated—but that doesn’t mean we should. As artist Anni Albers puts it, “Threads were among the earliest transmitters of meaning.” Within the parameters of the performance space, the loom becomes a rhythmic instrument, storyteller, companion, historian, and community focal point; the tactile score created in performance forms a sensory experience that alchemizes the clacking of the loom, the vibrancy of the threads, the movement of the shuttle, the echoes of the ancestors through song, and the trance induced by the weaving of story.

P E R S O N N E L

⚀ Doomi Soomi: accordion

⚁ Georgia E. Bell: bass

⚂ Ivan Cunningham: saxophone

⚃ Kathryn Schumann: voice

⚄ Kelby Clark: banjo

⚅ M. A. Harms: vibraphone

⚂ ⚃ Mark Kimbrell: drums

⚃ ⚃ Mason Moy: tuba & trombone

⚃ ⚄ Shelley Burgon: harp

⚄ ⚄ Violet Hannesena: violin

How good does it feel to pull back from time to time? To really shed excess, more-ness, and follow a single path with intention? The exploration of one thing can illuminate corners of the world overlooked by minds pushed in increasingly omnidirectional cycles of want. Tone Keepers is a collection of four compositions by flutist, composer, and sound artist Rachel Beetz that follow a straight line into unexpected territory. Each piece revolves around a simple but inventive technique for generating acoustic sound coupled with a discrete mode of electronic processing, spinning out variations on the unique effect it produces. Beetz encourages sounds to crystalize rather than expand, uncovering new permutations and emotional dimensions as curiosity leads her forward. The ear of the listener becomes a magnifying glass as the mind affixes itself to the music, its focus sharpening with each cyclical return.

Ten repetitive sonic interventions within the eroded landscapes of the Burren, County Clare, Ireland.

These occur at sites of local “anti-monuments:” a kilometers-long, natural limestone pavement high above Galway Bay; stone farm walls and remnants of circular structures on hillsides; cairns near a shoreline; a field of glacial boulders interrupted by a road smashed from the surrounding stone formations, in forced public work by the starving during the Great Hunger of 1845 to 1852. These structures speak to both the passage of geologic time, and the care and efforts of human survival beginning in the Neolithic period and tended through the present, though local history at each site may be lost, or unrecorded.

These are introduced in title cards in English, italicized as a term in a language foreign to the observer, and in Irish in plain font, as in an observer’s native language.

From one perspective, a sonic divining or physical research into the properties of land, space, light, and time in these locations; from another, an attempt as an “Irish-American” to reckon with language, archaeology, and history felt as formative but inarticulable without lived context.

After a point, you can only ask the stone so many questions, and sometimes you can only hear your own voice in response.

𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕒𝕣𝕞 is a free, monthly listening gathering at Oracle Egg. Each session features a carefully curated selection of physical media, played in full as intended by the artist. We listen together, without phones and without the pressure to consume quickly. In a culture shaped by streaming slop and endless access, these gatherings foregrounds human touch and curation. Records are chosen by people, physically handled, and offered up with vulnerability and care.

((Listening as an active practice and shared with others))

Brass quartet Diapason will perform And Now This Creature in anticipation of their upcoming album release of the work. And Now This Creature is a long form work for brass ensemble. This hour-long work features sustained tones in microtonal just intonation, with harmonies that morph from the beautiful to strange, with melodic gestures that emerge from the mass. Trevor Treglia is a composer and sound artist based in New York City. His practice centers on timbre, tuning, and pitch perception, exploring how specific harmonic relationships shape auditory and emotional experience. Diapason is a Los Angeles based quartet focused on perceptual phenomenon in long form drone music for brass instruments. The ensemble is Nev Wendell (trumpet), Nicholas Ginsburg (french horn), Mattie Barbier (trombone), and Mason Moy (tuba).

Improviser Wilfrido Terrazas and poet Ronnie Yates met for the first time in 2011, during an artistic residency in Florida, where they worked with the legendary Roscoe Mitchell. They have collaborated in various ways ever since, but this is their first live collaboration, exploring the liminal terrain where language becomes sound and sound becomes narrative. Terrazas’s music, deeply shaped by the poetry scene of Mexico City, intersects with Yates’s verse, which has been equally influenced by Houston’s experimental music community. Together, they create an adventurous dialogue of words and sound, improvising across traditions and geographies in real time.

Eli Klausner has always fostered a close connection between his improvisational compositional practices, seeking to constantly renew his relationship with everyday materials, objects and gestures. He will be playing a new set up he has developed of strings and wires of different materials, stretched across a frame, activated by spinning dc motors.

three sets of improvised music presented by Kelly Bray (solo electroacoustic trumpet), Mitch Dion (solo electronics), and a new trio by Grace Dashnaw, M. A. Harms, and Jakob Heinemann (cello, percussion, upright bass)

An ensemble of 13 players create a collective work born from a spontaneous moment. One large group united, distinct voices building one multi-dimensional shape as they mobilize themselves through space. The individual voice is encouraged (not suppressed) because it feeds a fleshed out, more powerful whole.

FUCK ICE. Oracle Egg is located in the historic Fashion District of downtown Los Angeles where the very first ICE raids hit this city back in June of 2025. We have witnessed the dramatic change to this neighborhood since their guerrilla style warfare began. Vendors who are afraid to sell, and shops that have closed up for good. This is the long term damage done to the communities that remain in the wake of raids. All proceeds raised this evening will be split evenly between three vendors working here in the Fashion District. Our neighbors are struggling financially but they also need to know that there is still hope and that we are here for them.

If you come to the show, we encourage you to come early, get some food and do some shopping around Santee Alley.  It is a cultural institution which supports a version of commerce that operates outside of mainstream, corporate channels. Community support is the only way places like it will survive.

Curated with Nelle J. Anderson

Dis-order, choreographed and directed by Mamie Green / VOLTA, is an interdisciplinary performance that tests the societal line between order and chaos with dark levity. Staged à la Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, the piece references Jewish symbolism, Greek tragedy, and Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring via large-scale puppetry by Freak Nature Puppets. The piece, jointly imagined by Mamie Green and writer Rebecca Schultz, is directed and choreographed by Green and written by Schultz. It features a collaborative team including puppets by Freak Nature Puppets, production design and paintings by artist Ari Salka, with an original score composed and performed by Patrick Shiroishi and Dylan Fujioka. The work is performed by Roxanne Steinberg, Anaya Cierra, Ryley Polak, Sophie Becker, Tim Allen, and Nico Fife.

Dis-order will premiere at Skirball Cultural Center March 19th & 20th, 2026.

Seven Cups Echo is a participatory performance that explores the interaction of senses in the context of an intimate tea ceremony. Utilizing an augmented tea set embedded with sensors, the gestures and movements of a gongfu style tea tasting will trigger and modulate quadrophonic sound and visual elements in real time. As participants are invited to drink tea, their movements will contribute to the co-creation of an evolving audiovisual environment, turning the ceremony into a collaborative composition scored by the ritual of both making and drinking tea. By drawing tangible connections between movement, taste, smell, sight, and sound, Seven Cups Echo creates a multi-sensory experience that reimagines a classic gongfu tea ceremony. Conceptualized and composed by Marc Merza and Emma Palm with creative technologist Álvaro Cáceres and live projections by Cuìxī Lín. Custom ceramic tea set made by Gerin del Carmen and snacks from Gu Grocery.

Jennifer Bewerse presents Double Spaces, a multimedia performance reflecting on friendship, how we support and find support in each other, and what we gain when we refuse to avoid the hardest moments of our relationships. Through film, recordings, and intimate ephemera from a decade-long friendship and artistic collaboration with Heather Barnes, the piece becomes a posthumous duet of memory, presence, and enduring connection. The residency allows Jennifer to refine the performance’s structure and experiment with new combinations of text, film, and ephemera to deepen the work’s reflection on how we remember each other and our imagined futures that are never promised. Over the course of its 60-minute continuous performance, audiences sit together in quiet community, witnessing moments of grief, care, and enduring friendship unfold and holding space for private reflection within shared presence. The performance invites audiences to consider how embracing the reality of death can deepen our capacity for connection and intimacy. What happens when we refuse to look away?

Ghost Ensemble presents an evening of recent commissions incorporating just intonation, elemental forces, and Renaissance/Baroque practices, featuring the world premiere of the ensemble’s newest commission from KCM Walker and the Los Angeles premieres of Sarah Davachi’s Ghost Ensemble commission and the latest percussion work from Akari Komura. Developed through close collaboration with the ensemble, Sarah Davachi’s Basso Continuo stretches the Baroque practice of harmonic accompaniment to an extreme duration in a glacial just-intonation counterpoint. Like much of Davachi’s music, the real action happens in the phenomenological experience beyond the notation; her work invites a harmonic listening in between stasis and motion, where the physical bodies of the instruments and resonance of the room are constantly in play with one another. K.C.M. Walker’s Low Dance and Winding Wind, inspired by the Basse Danse and Tourdion dance forms popular at the turn of the sixteenth century, is composed around a just intonation scale that moves from a focus on harmonic consonance to the polyphonic texture of overlapping melodic contours. Drawing on the translation of Tourdion in reference to a twisting or winding motion, Winding Wind is a prolation canon featuring the harp which maintains an ostinato while simultaneously doubling the bass flute, accordion, and contrabass as they play versions of the same melody at different rates. Akari Komura’s voices on the surface invites the performer and listeners into dialogue with the voicelessness of natural elements, imagining sonic landscapes on the surfaces of trees, fire, earth, ore, and water.

a night of varied experimental musics by west coast DIY stalwarts

A messy, hazy, unfurled drone set within the auspices of Oracle Egg. Spiraling inward alone isn't recommended. Organ tones and weird synthesis. Spiraling outward alone is necessary. Volumetric projection and lights on bricks. Spiraling inward together is sometimes desired.

Codes is a collaboration between Kamari Carter and Gladstone Deluxe that features an audio-visual durational performance using data extracted from live police scanner transmissions as material for musical exploration. Deriving from Carter’s research-oriented practice on policing, incarceration, Black aesthetics, and surveillance, and Deluxe’s haptic, Afrological and techno-inspired analog compositions, Codes works towards a synthesis and seeks to elevate the obfuscated. Given our current political climate, policing both of the body and of our country has become heightened to an unprecedented level. As artists of color, they believe it is their responsibility to address the world around them, which has been and will continue to be a driving force both in our artistic and compositional practices.

"Where were you where I was not?”

Steeped in caregiving, end-of-life questions and observations of how a Life lived does not seem to hold onto a sense of linear chronology, we are setting out with the intention of exploring time and space in layered depth over span where at any moment a certain layer could come to the fore while another recedes. During our residency, we will collectively and site-specifically explore the space as a container of layered experience and engagement, underlining the ephemerality and elusiveness of the here and now.

CAROLE KIM - live video installation, sound actions

CARMINA ESCOBAR - extended voice, electronics, sound actions

KATE MORALES - dance actions

PAUL CHAVEZ - sound actions & spatialization

Carole Kim is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on multimedia installation, video projection, live and telematic performance, drawing and experimental sound. She has experimented extensively with the optical phenomena of video projection in space including intricately hand-made layered projection environments and site-specific video projection onto large scale urban architecture and natural landscapes such as the forest in Norway, the rockscapes in Joshua Tree and the old oak groves in Descanso Gardens. As someone who works extensively with technology, it is where technology meets up with the human, physical, tangible world that interests her most. Kim has a love for creating contexts that invite synergistic collaboration and co-creation.

Carmina Escobar is a Los Angeles-based extreme vocalist, improviser, performer, and sound and intermedia artist whose work explores the boundaries of voice and sound to investigate emotions, politics, alienation, and human connection. Through performances, installations, and video works, she challenges conventions of musicality, gender, queerness, race, language, and communication. As an immigrant, her practice often examines suspended states between worlds, politics, and borders. Her work has been presented internationally and supported by prestigious residencies and awards, including recognition for sound innovation and experimental art. She remains focused on creating thoughtful and boundary-pushing work while staying rooted in the exploratory and collaborative nature of her practice.

Paul Chávez is a Chicano composer, instrumentalist, and sound designer from Southern California, blending his background in architecture and engineering with a focus on sonic textures and acoustical spaces. His work, described as "deliriously original" by the Los Angeles Times, has been presented at leading institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles Music Center, REDCAT, the Architecture and Design Museum, and the Grec Festival in Barcelona. Chávez has collaborated with Oguri, Roxanne Steinberg, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Nels Cline, JOJO ABOT, Carole Kim, The Edge, Sarah Elgart, and Morleigh Steinberg. He is also an Interaction Designer at Arup, technical director for Luminex, and an At-Large board member at Fulcrum Arts.

Kate Morales is a dancer, choreographer, and strength and conditioning coach based in Southern California. After graduating from Cal Arts in 2011 with a BFA in Dance and Choreography, she moved to New York City. Her work was presented throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, largely in collaboration with Lara Mahler, a NYU Tisch grad. She became a Certified Personal Trainer and Pilates Mat & Reformer instructor through Mt. San Antonio College, and runs her own personal training business and coaches Crossfit. She currently manages a fitness facility in La Verne, CA serving people over the age of 55. Her daughter attends an arts school in Pomona where she specializes in theatre and dance.

"Where were you where I was not?”

Steeped in caregiving, end-of-life questions and observations of how a Life lived does not seem to hold onto a sense of linear chronology, we are setting out with the intention of exploring time and space in layered depth over span where at any moment a certain layer could come to the fore while another recedes. During our residency, we will collectively and site-specifically explore the space as a container of layered experience and engagement, underlining the ephemerality and elusiveness of the here and now.

CAROLE KIM - live video installation, sound actions

CARMINA ESCOBAR - extended voice, electronics, sound actions

KATE MORALES - dance actions

PAUL CHAVEZ - sound actions & spatialization

Carole Kim is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on multimedia installation, video projection, live and telematic performance, drawing and experimental sound. She has experimented extensively with the optical phenomena of video projection in space including intricately hand-made layered projection environments and site-specific video projection onto large scale urban architecture and natural landscapes such as the forest in Norway, the rockscapes in Joshua Tree and the old oak groves in Descanso Gardens. As someone who works extensively with technology, it is where technology meets up with the human, physical, tangible world that interests her most. Kim has a love for creating contexts that invite synergistic collaboration and co-creation.

Carmina Escobar is a Los Angeles-based extreme vocalist, improviser, performer, and sound and intermedia artist whose work explores the boundaries of voice and sound to investigate emotions, politics, alienation, and human connection. Through performances, installations, and video works, she challenges conventions of musicality, gender, queerness, race, language, and communication. As an immigrant, her practice often examines suspended states between worlds, politics, and borders. Her work has been presented internationally and supported by prestigious residencies and awards, including recognition for sound innovation and experimental art. She remains focused on creating thoughtful and boundary-pushing work while staying rooted in the exploratory and collaborative nature of her practice.

Paul Chávez is a Chicano composer, instrumentalist, and sound designer from Southern California, blending his background in architecture and engineering with a focus on sonic textures and acoustical spaces. His work, described as "deliriously original" by the Los Angeles Times, has been presented at leading institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles Music Center, REDCAT, the Architecture and Design Museum, and the Grec Festival in Barcelona. Chávez has collaborated with Oguri, Roxanne Steinberg, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Nels Cline, JOJO ABOT, Carole Kim, The Edge, Sarah Elgart, and Morleigh Steinberg. He is also an Interaction Designer at Arup, technical director for Luminex, and an At-Large board member at Fulcrum Arts.

Kate Morales is a dancer, choreographer, and strength and conditioning coach based in Southern California. After graduating from Cal Arts in 2011 with a BFA in Dance and Choreography, she moved to New York City. Her work was presented throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, largely in collaboration with Lara Mahler, a NYU Tisch grad. She became a Certified Personal Trainer and Pilates Mat & Reformer instructor through Mt. San Antonio College, and runs her own personal training business and coaches Crossfit. She currently manages a fitness facility in La Verne, CA serving people over the age of 55. Her daughter attends an arts school in Pomona where she specializes in theatre and dance.

The spiral worker operates as a connector in a rhizome-like network, gathering and transferring material (corn synth, corn silk, corn husk), unlike tree-like structures that impose order. spiral worker features an expanded corn synth system (Kinetically Operated Randomness Network) built around two touch-controlled aluminum corn ears. This instrument draws from my collaboration with disability communities through Pauline Oliveros' AUMI project. The corn synth's design references the Buchla 158 synthesizer from the 1963 San Francisco Tape Music Center, creating a hybrid modular environment. Through spiral work the piece transforms this system into a sculptural, world-building experience involving multiple performers on electronics, percussion, violin, euphonium, and saxophone. All participants—performers, audience members, and conceptual frameworks—function as interconnected spiral workers within this non-hierarchy.

Techno-Babble Sound Bath is a multimedia performance by Kai-Luen Liang, Gamin, and Menghe Jing for voice clones, live voice, electronics, and traditional Chinese and Korean instruments. Framed as an imagined California sound bath—outer calm, often turbulent within—it explores how labeling and rumination shape perception. A real-time system captures video captions, voice dictation, and text-to-speech, then scrambles the language into sheets of sound. The performers improvise with these streams, turning cascading text into sound-poetry phrases, rhythmic stutters, moments of calm and noise.

Silent Scream is a simultaneous screening of four silent horror films from the 1920s, live-scored by an ensemble of soloists. The films are projected onto different hanging surfaces, dividing the space and housing the performers. Each musician is tasked with providing the score for one of the films without responding to any of the other musicians. The audience is invited to wander the space, mixing the audio and video for themselves, choosing or changing their vantage point as they see fit. Part performance, part installation, part haunted house, Silent Scream tests the flexibility of the relationship between sound, screen, and viewer by experimenting with how material can inform a musician’s improvisation and the different ways a sense of ensemble can be created (or destroyed).

Silent Scream is a simultaneous screening of four silent horror films from the 1920s, live-scored by an ensemble of soloists. The films are projected onto different hanging surfaces, dividing the space and housing the performers. Each musician is tasked with providing the score for one of the films without responding to any of the other musicians. The audience is invited to wander the space, mixing the audio and video for themselves, choosing or changing their vantage point as they see fit. Part performance, part installation, part haunted house, Silent Scream tests the flexibility of the relationship between sound, screen, and viewer by experimenting with how material can inform a musician’s improvisation and the different ways a sense of ensemble can be created (or destroyed).