Flute and percussion duo Caballito Negro connects communities to the magic of new flute and percussion music, creating and disseminating new works that foster empathy and imagination. Tessa Brinckman (flutes) and Terry Longshore (percussion) curate, compose, commission, and collaborate in inspiring interdisciplinary projects, seeking true cultural exchange with local, regional, and international artists.

Originating in 2008 in Oregon (and since 2022, a bi-coastal duo), Caballito Negro has been praised for “wildly personal, intercultural, modern music...vivid, expressive music that could be performed anywhere” (Oregon Arts Watch), and their first EP ("Songlines") is described as having an "absolutely gorgeous tone...understated virtuosity" (Blue Sky Music), and being “expertly produced and played” (NFA Quarterly). Individually Tessa Brinckman and Terry Longshore are renowned international artists, bringing a wealth of experience to the stage. They also compose as a duo, synthesizing their eclectic musical dialects.

Their work as a guest duo and in artistic residencies includes the Cervantino International Festival (Guanajuato Mexico), Manuel Enríquez International Forum of New Music (Mexico City), Princeton Sound Kitchen (NJ), Livewire Festival (Baltimore), Ashland Independent Film Festival (OR), Festival of New American Music (CA), Center for New Music (San Francisco), Britt Music & Arts Festival (OR), CCRMA at Stanford (CA), and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They share years of musical and life experience with audiences, in giving joint mastery classes and workshops to explore questions of intercultural exchange and hybrid forms. During the pandemic Caballito Negro helped produce and perform an online US/Canadian/Mexican collaboration of Frederick Rzewski's seminal "Coming Together".

Adding "+ Friends" when performing collectively, Caballito Negro’s collaborations include “mad-scientist-of-music” Mark Applebaum (Stanford University), CMA Michael Jaffee Visionary Award winner Ronnie Malley, percussionist/composer Ivan Trevino (University of Texas at Austin), Dúo Duplum (Mexico), Ruckus Duo (University Maryland Baltimore County), Sarah Tiedemann and Christopher Whyte (Third Angle, Portland OR) Juri Seo (Princeton University), and former LA Philharmonic composer-in-residence William Kraft. 

Recent commissions include leading a large international consortium to commission composer Juri Seo, adding the world's first flute/percussion quartet to the repertoire. Caballito Negro have been performing this commission, “Birds, Bees, Electric Fish” across the United States and Mexico, collaborating with other duos in unique creative programs. The duo is commissioning University of Pennsylvania composer Baljinder Sekhon to create an innovative double concerto work for them in 2026.

Recent recording projects include releasing multiple singles and producing a video "Bare White Bones,” with film-maker Christopher Lucas and Australian composer Wally Gunn. Recent performance premieres that range from theatrical “sound suits” to Latin jazz to post-modern hybridities include works written for Caballito Negro by Javier Compeán, Hope Littwin, Gene Pritzker, Will Rowe, Samuel Torres, and Jason Treuting.

Recent grant support for Caballito Negro’s performances include Chamber Music America’s Artistic Projects program (funded through the generosity of The Howard Gilman Foundation) and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (NYC).

Interdisciplinary flutist/composer Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts and virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), an “excellent flutist” (Willamette Week) who “play(s) her instrument with great beauty and eloquence” (Music Matters New Zealand), and as “an adroit creator of sound worlds” (Fanfare). Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand, she has premiered well over a hundred new works (commissioning almost thirty), with many acclaimed classical music ensembles, concert series, musicians and composers across the globe. Now based in New York City since 2022, she enjoys creating and performing unique work that honors synesthesia, dialect, innate meter and collaboration, often on geo-poetic themes in a surrealist spirit.

She performs internationally as an orchestral, chamber, soloist and resident artist, in numerous and wildly diverse productions, from the Oregon Symphony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), Waikato and Canterbury Universities (New Zealand), Festival of New American Music (CA), CCRMA (Stanford, CA), Hermanus Whale Festival (South Africa), Goodman Theater (Chicago), Britt Festival Orchestra (OR), Wuzhen Theatre Festival (China), to Poisson Rouge and Roulette (New York City).

Playing flute, piccolo, alto, bass, contrabass and baroque flutes, and miscellaneous keyboards, she also co-directs the ever-polymathic bi-coastal duo, Caballito Negro, with percussionist Terry Longshore, commissioning significant new work for flute and percussion. Her composition team for Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman’s White Snake was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award (2014). Her experimental video (with Jane Rigler), Women in Parallel Empires (2021), exploring the moon, extraction, and “Empire”, and the animation The Gorgon Cycles (2023) (created with Miles Inada and Devyn McConachie) depicting Medusa’s rise in the Anthropocene, have won 22 film festival awards for music scoring, animation and experimental film. She has served on the music faculties of colleges such as Southern Oregon University, and teaches international workshops and masterclasses that address flute culture, music-making and artist activism.

Tessa’s latest critically acclaimed album, Take Wing, Roll Back (New Focus Recordings (2024) embodies her personal and artistic connections to New Zealand, USA, South Africa and France. Recent guest artist collaborations in 2024 include Princeton Sound Kitchen, Livewire Festival (Baltimore), Sound of Silent Film Festival (NYC) and Sylvana Wind Quintet, as well as supporting grants for other 2024 concerts from New York Women Composers, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Chamber Music America.

Terry Longshore is a percussionist based in Ashland, Oregon whose genre-crossing work exhibits the artistry of the concert stage, the spontaneity of jazz, and the energy of a rock club. Whether collaborating with multi-media artists, composing live music for dance and theatre, or premiering works by today’s most ground-breaking composers, Terry Longshore brings a dynamic voice to every musical encounter.

From concert venues in the Americas, Europe, and Australia to flash mobs in Amsterdam, he has concertized and performed throughout the world. He is the co-artistic director of flute and percussion duo Caballito Negro and multi-media duo Left Edge Collective, and performs with flamenco ensemble Flamenco Pacifico. He has performed extensively with ensembles Skin & Bones, red fish blue fish, Conundrum, and Sonoluminescence, among others and has performed at numerous festivals including the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, the Britt Music & Arts Festival, the Transplanted Roots International Percussion Symposium (Montreal and Guanajuato), the Cabrillo Music Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Festival of New American Music, the Northwest Percussion Festival, The Oregon Fringe Festival, and has been featured numerous times at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). His compositions for percussion have been performed at festivals and competitions throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Longshore can be heard on numerous recordings and has premiered over 100 compositions for solo percussion, percussion ensemble, chamber ensemble, symphony orchestra, theatrical works, and more. His recordings include the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis for Mode Recordings, music of percussion maverick William Kraft on Albany, Michael Gordon’s Natural History on Cantaloupe Music, and multiple CDs for Stanford University composer Mark Applebaum on the innova and Tzadik labels. Terry Longshore is a Yamaha Performing Artist, a Marimba One Vibe Artist, and an artist endorser for Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Remo Drumheads, Gon Bops Percussion, and Beato Bags, and is a member of the Black Swamp Percussion Education Network. He is a trained HealthRHYTHMS facilitator.

Terry Longshore holds bachelor’s degrees from the California State University at Fresno (Business Administration – Computer Applications and Systems) and Sacramento (Music – Percussion Performance) and earned the master’s and doctoral degrees in Contemporary Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego. His education includes significant study of Spanish flamenco and the classical music of India, including study at the Ali Akbar College of Music. His teachers include Steven Schick, Daniel Kennedy, Swapan Chaudhuri, Ronald Holloway, David Glyde, Chuck Flores, and Kartik Seshadri. He holds the position of Chair of the Music Program, Graduate Coordinator, and Professor of Music at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University where he directs Left Edge Percussion and the Southern Oregon University Percussion Ensemble, teaches courses in Percussion, Music Business, and Contemporary Art & Music.