Long Play Festival

Each project from the composer and multi-reed player Ken Thomson has been good news,” wrote The New York Times about the Bang on a Call All-Stars clarinetist and composer and the Anzû Quartet. Anzû Quartet, a collaboration of musicians from Bang on a Can, Eighth Blackbird, Mivos Quartet and Bearthoven, play the New York premiere Ken Thomson’s “Uneasy” (Cantaloupe Music 2025), then add to their forces to play Thomson’s 2018 clarinet quintet “Pall.

Orlas draws its name from the Portuguese word for 'shores' or 'coasts.' Crafted by the dynamic collaboration of Victor Chicri and Vic Delnur, a father-and-son musical journey unfolds. This fusion encompasses, samba-jazz, bossa nova, disco-funk, and more, resulting in a captivating and genre-defying musical experience.

Dither, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire which spans composed, improvised, and electronic music. Formed in 2007, the quartet has performed across the United States and abroad, presenting new commissions, original compositions, multimedia works, and large guitar ensemble pieces. Dither’s members are Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore, and Brendon Randall-Myers.

Dianne Berkun Menaker, Founder and Artistic Director

BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS is a Grammy Award-winning ensemble, led by Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker, that regularly performs on global stages like Carnegie Hall, the Tokyo Dome, and the United Nations; collaborates with renowned artists including Gustavo Dudamel, The National, and Sir Elton John; commissions bold new works like the landmark Port(al) (premiered May 2025 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard); produces original theater productions; contributes to recordings for major artists and film; and currently serves over 500 students a year in its after-school and public-school programs.

Lucy Railton is a British cellist, composer, cross-disciplinary collaborator whose practice reflects an endlessly innovative and restless approach to the cello and artistic self-expression. For the last 2 decades, her work has moved freely between Classical and contemporary music, electronic composition, improvisation and popular music performance.  As a collaborator she has contributed to major works with artists including Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith, Akram Khan, Philippe Parreno, Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley, Peter Zinovieff, Maryanne Amacher, Laurel Halo, Beatrice Dillon and many others, as well as writing for dance, film and visual art installations. Follows a string of celebrated releases on labels including Modern Love, Editions Mego - GRM Portraits, PAN and ECM her solo album Blue Veil is a deeply intimate, meditative set of compositions for solo cello, released this year on the label Ideologic Organ.

SAHA GNAWA brings North African futurism to the U.S., uniting the founders of Innov Gnawa with leading figures from New York City's jazz and contemporary music scenes to reimagine modern Gnawa music.

Based in Baltimore, Matmos is Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. The two have been making music as Matmos since 1997, first in San Francisco, and then relocating to Baltimore in 2007 when Daniel began to teach at Johns Hopkins University. They are respected, innovative auteurs in the world of electronic music and sampling culture whose very first album was hailed as “entering electronics Valhalla” by the WIRE magazine for sampling highly unusual sound sources such as the amplified nerve tissue of crayfish. Ever since, they have made music out a wildly heterogeneous set of objects and sources, including the sound of the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, cigarettes, cards shuffling, laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions, balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones, Polish trains, insects, life support systems, inflatable blankets, rock salt, solid gold coins, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal, snails interrupting the path of a laser and altering the pitch of a light sensitive theremin, a PVC police riot shield, silicon breast implants, and their own washing machine. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms, and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by internationally celebrated guest musicians from their circle of friends and collaborators. The result is a model of electronic composition as a relational network that connects sources and outcomes together; information about the process of creation activates the listening experience, providing the listener with entry points into sometimes densely allusive, baroque recordings that have the direct sensory immediacy of pop music.

French pianist and composer Melaine Dalibert has been exploring the field of generative music for nearly two decades, developing “paper algorithms” that never sacrifice poetry and great harmonic subtlety. His “vermilion hour,” a record project initially conceived with David Sylvian (2025), will be presented for the first time in the USA in its instrumental version, combining piano and synthesizer.

Each project from the composer and multi-reed player Ken Thomson has been good news,” wrote The New York Times about the Bang on a Call All-Stars clarinetist and composer and the Anzû Quartet.  Anzû Quartet, a collaboration of musicians from Bang on a Can, Eighth Blackbird, Mivos Quartet and Bearthoven, play the New York premiere Ken Thomson’s “Uneasy” (Cantaloupe Music 2025), then add to their forces to play Thomson’s 2018 clarinet quintet “Pall.

Kalia Vandever is a Grammy Award-winning trombonist and composer. Her approach to the trombone is distinctive and defined by her sonorous tone and lyrical improvisational voice. She leans into the challenges of the instrument and allows patience and melody guide her process.

Exceptet is an “eclectic” and “quirky” (New Yorker) New York-based new music septet featuring violin/singer, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, double bass, and percussion. Described as a “cleverly-named…pocket orchestra” with “chattering, post-minimalist sound” (New Sounds), “rambunctious, minimalist, alt-pop energy” (I Care If You Listen), and “excellent playing” that makes for “an appealing, imaginative listen” (Fanfare), Exceptet has played in various festivals and venues across America including Merkin Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, and Roulette, and have been presented by Con Vivo Music in Jersey City, NJ, the Johnstone Foundation for New Music in Columbus, OH, the Ecstatic Music Festival, MATA Interval Series in New York, and more. Exceptet is dedicated to commissioning new works from young and emerging composers and released their debut album, Tree Lines, on New Focus Recordings in 2025.

Miles Okazaki is a NYC-based guitarist originally from Port Townsend, a small seaside town in Washington State. His approach to the guitar is described by the New York Times as “utterly contemporary, free from the expectations of what it means to play a guitar in a group setting — not just in jazz, but any kind.” His touring and recording experience over three decades includes work with Henry Threadgill, Kenny Barron, John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Miguel Zenón, Stanley Turrentine, Patricia Brennan, Mary Halvorson, Amir ElSaffar, and many others. He has released 12 albums of original compositions over the last 12 and received wide critical acclaim for his six-album recording of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, an unprecedented project that Nate Chinen called “the six-string equivalent of a free solo climb up El Capitan.” In 2024 he recorded the entire songbook again from memory in a one night, five-hour concert filmed at The Jazz Gallery in NYC.