Caballito Negro residency at University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2027!
Caballito Negro w/Dúo Duplum in Mexico City…
Caballito Negro (Tessa Brinckman and Terry Longshore) are happy to be collaborating with one of Mexico’s finest contemporary duos, Duo Duplum (Ivan Manzanilla and Fernando Dominguez). They will present their epic commissioned piece composed by Juri Seo, Birds, Bees, Electric Fish, in a new quartet version for flutes, clarinets, and percussion. The quartet will also present pieces by Javier Compeán, and Mark Applebaum, with the University Guanajuato Percussion Ensemble.
The Festival Internacional Cervantino (FIC) 2025 will be held in Guanajuato, Mexico, from October 10 to October 26, 2025 and is Mexico’s premier festival of the arts.
Caballito Negro joins Baltimore’s Lisa Cella and Dustin Donahue for a quartet performance of Birds, Bees, Electric Fish by Juri Seo, a world’s first double duo for flute and percussion, alongside other innovative music. The concert will be held in the Richardson Auditorium as part of the Princeton Sound Kitchen Series, by special arrangement for this project. Also featured are three commissions especially written for Caballito Negro + Friends by Jason Treuting, Hope Littwin, and Isaac Santos.
Princeton University faculty member Juri Seo’s ‘Birds, Bees, Electric Fish’ is a 30-minute work that imagines the perceptual worlds experienced by non-human organisms, scored for 2 flutists and 2 percussionists. The program also features new works for the performers by faculty member Jason Treuting, and graduate student composers Hope Littwin and Isaac Santos.
Ticketing is free and unticketed.
Caballito Negro is the lead commissioner for this new work recently completed by Princeton composer Juri Seo for flute/percussion quartet. The 28-minute, three-movement work is the first of its kind created for double flute/percussion duos, and is inspired by Umwelt, the German word for environment used in biology to denote the perceptual world as experienced by a specific organism.
In Juri’s words: “While our perception is limited to our own Umwelt, delineated by the limits of human perceptual capacity, we can imagine other animals’ Umwelten by studying their physiology and behaviors. The attempt at this impossible task of exiting the self-centered perception is a deeply human endeavor that may help recontextualize our relationship with other organisms and with the living world. To compose the work, I began by selecting three organisms I found particularly interesting: birds, bees, and electric fish. How do birds hear their own songs? What goes on in the mind of a bee in a colony? And what does it feel like to be a fish feeling its three-dimensional surrounding via an electrical sensa/on on its skin?
The audience is encouraged to mentally map their surroundings replete with diverse vibrating objects. The translations of senses become more abstract as the piece unfolds; from birds to bees and to electric fish, various senses—auditory, visual, kinetic, and tactile—are alluded to through sounds only. Ironically, my attempt to enter the minds of other beings necessitated a heightened sense of humanity, as I strove to imagine their diverse non-human senses through a lens of familiarity and empathy. It involved hearing birds slower, imbuing them with lyricism; imagining the serene and joyful minds of bees; and experiencing a sense of touch and sight through the act of listening.”
Caballito Negro + Friends join Baltimore’s Lisa Cella and Dustin Donahue for a quartet performance of Birds, Bees, Electric Fish by Juri Seo a world’s first double duo for flute and percussion, alongside other innovative music by Emma O’Halloran, Jane Rigler, Will Rowe, Stuart Saunders Smith.
The complete program:
Jane Rigler — Two Seaming
Emma O’Halloran — music for the small hours
Stuart Saunders Smith — No. 13
Will Rowe — Itch
Juri Seo — Birds, Bees, Electric Fish — East Coast Premiere
The concert centers around the brilliant, virtuosic, family-friendly music piece, Birds, Bees, Electric Fish, which has wowed diverse audiences all over the USA, that Caballito Negro commissioned from composer Juri Seo, and includes poetic, imaginative pieces by other American composers. The event will begin with a special Spanish/English bilingual talk, led by Good Shepherd’s own Carla López-Speziale. Carla and the musicians will invite the audience into the unique sounds of instruments from all over the world, the imaginative sounds of animals and nature, as well as the found sounds of everyday junk.
The concert is free, with a suggested donation of $20 for adults and $10 for children, which support Good Shepherd School.
This performance is supported by both a 2024 grant from Chamber Music America’s Artistic Projects program (funded through the generosity of The Howard Gilman Foundation), a 2024 UMEZ Arts Engagement grant, and Inwood Art Works.
Caballito Negro is the lead commissioner for this new work recently completed by Princeton composer Juri Seo for flute/percussion quartet. The 28-minute, three-movement work is the first of its kind created for double flute/percussion duos, and is inspired by Umwelt, the German word for environment used in biology to denote the perceptual world as experienced by a specific organism.
In Juri’s words: “While our perception is limited to our own Umwelt, delineated by the limits of human perceptual capacity, we can imagine other animals’ Umwelten by studying their physiology and behaviors. The attempt at this impossible task of exiting the self-centered perception is a deeply human endeavor that may help recontextualize our relationship with other organisms and with the living world. To compose the work, I began by selecting three organisms I found particularly interesting: birds, bees, and electric fish. How do birds hear their own songs? What goes on in the mind of a bee in a colony? And what does it feel like to be a fish feeling its three-dimensional surrounding via an electrical sensa/on on its skin?
The audience is encouraged to mentally map their surroundings replete with diverse vibrating objects. The translations of senses become more abstract as the piece unfolds; from birds to bees and to electric fish, various senses—auditory, visual, kinetic, and tactile—are alluded to through sounds only. Ironically, my attempt to enter the minds of other beings necessitated a heightened sense of humanity, as I strove to imagine their diverse non-human senses through a lens of familiarity and empathy. It involved hearing birds slower, imbuing them with lyricism; imagining the serene and joyful minds of bees; and experiencing a sense of touch and sight through the act of listening.”
Caballito Negro joins Baltimore’s Lisa Cella and Dustin Donahue for a quartet performance of Birds, Bees, Electric Fish by Juri Seo., a world’s first double duo for flute and percussion, alongside other innovative music by Emma O’Halloran, Jane Rigler, Will Rowe, Stuart Saunders Smith. It’s the East Coast premiere of Birds, Bees, Electric Fish.
The complete program:
Jane Rigler — Two Seaming
Emma O’Halloran — music for the small hours
Stuart Saunders Smith — No. 13
Will Rowe — Itch
Juri Seo — Birds, Bees, Electric Fish — East Coast Premiere
Admission is free, but tickets are required. Please visit here to reserve seats.
This concert is the fifth of six events in Livewire 14: Resounding. To view the complete schedule, please visit here.
Linehan Concert Hall is easy to visit, with plenty of free parking. Please visit here for directions and parking information.
Livewire is sponsored in part by the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA). This event is made possible with financial support from the Linehan Fund for Excellence in the Arts.
Caballito Negro is the lead commissioner for this new work recently completed by Princeton composer Juri Seo for flute/percussion quartet. The 28-minute, three-movement work is the first of its kind created for double flute/percussion duos, and is inspired by Umwelt, the German word for environment used in biology to denote the perceptual world as experienced by a specific organism.
In Juri’s words: “While our perception is limited to our own Umwelt, delineated by the limits of human perceptual capacity, we can imagine other animals’ Umwelten by studying their physiology and behaviors. The attempt at this impossible task of exiting the self-centered perception is a deeply human endeavor that may help recontextualize our relationship with other organisms and with the living world. To compose the work, I began by selecting three organisms I found particularly interesting: birds, bees, and electric fish. How do birds hear their own songs? What goes on in the mind of a bee in a colony? And what does it feel like to be a fish feeling its three-dimensional surrounding via an electrical sensa/on on its skin?
The audience is encouraged to mentally map their surroundings replete with diverse vibrating objects. The translations of senses become more abstract as the piece unfolds; from birds to bees and to electric fish, various senses—auditory, visual, kinetic, and tactile—are alluded to through sounds only. Ironically, my attempt to enter the minds of other beings necessitated a heightened sense of humanity, as I strove to imagine their diverse non-human senses through a lens of familiarity and empathy. It involved hearing birds slower, imbuing them with lyricism; imagining the serene and joyful minds of bees; and experiencing a sense of touch and sight through the act of listening.”
Caballito Negro is releasing their single of Wally Gunn’s Bare White Bones on Bandcamp. It’s a 12 minute rollicking and haunting poetic rant, based on the macabre Scottish ballad “The Twa Corbies,” The accompanying video (created by Christopher Lucas) evokes our modern-day ecological crises with shadow puppetry, gorgeous landscape photography, and masked performance. Here’s the trailer
We are releasing BWB on April 27 to celebrate International Crow & Raven Appreciation Day - caw caw!
Caballito Negro and Sarah Tiedemann and Christopher Whyte of Third Angle New Music will present the west coast premiere of Juri Seo’s new work for flute/percussion quartet…
Tessa Brinckman and Terry Longshore talk with Geoff Riley on the Jefferson Exchange about their upcoming performance with Sarah Tiedemann and Christopher Whyte at the Oregon Center for the Performing Arts. The centerpiece of the concert is Birds, Bees, Electric Fish (for which Caballito Negro led a commission from composer Juri Seo), along with pieces by Emma O’Halloran, Tessa Brinckman, Samuel Torres, Roshanne Etezady and Alison Loggins-Hull.
Caballito Negro (Terry Longshore and Tessa Brinckman) are thrilled to bring their flute and percussion sounds to nightclub The Delancey in NYC, as guests of Composers Concordance.
Caballito Negro teams up with Portland Percussion Group on their NW mini-tour.
Caballito Negro teams up with Portland Percussion Group on their NW mini-tour.
Members of Caballito Negro (Tessa Brinckman and Terry Longshore), and Portland Percussion Group (Paul Owen and Christopher Whyte), talk about their upcoming mini-tour in Oregon with Christa Wessel, on her Thursdays @ 3 radio show.
Flute and percussion duo, Caballito Negro, alongside Left Edge Percussion, perform The Stone Tapestry, Jeff Herriott’s epic, shape-shifting work for flute and percussion soloists with percussion quartet. The Stone Tapestry weaves together myths about origins, life cycles, and the significance of change. Composed for flute and percussion soloists, plus percussion quartet, and employing a myriad of flutes, percussion, electronics, and video, the piece traces the path of just a few stones, from discovery to disappearance, in a ritualistic performance.
The concert also features a cheery work for flute and percussion quartet, Hammers, by renowned flutist/composer Allison Loggins-Hull. It was inspired by the sounds of industrial construction in New York City, where the composer lives.
You can hear the Jefferson Public Radio interview about the concert here.
Tickets: $10 for general admission $5 seniors
Masks are required – show proof of vaccination or a negative COVD-19 test at the door
The livestream link is FREE: https://youtu.be/dcfV4yclNAc
OCA Music Presents “the passage of time...” produced by Left Edge Collective
WHAT: the passage of time… brings together performers from Canada, the U.S., and Mexico for a virtual performance of two works: David Bithell’s Subterranean, a technological exploration of isolation, uncertainty, and the hope for connection – and Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together – a work that 50 years after its composition in reaction to the deadly riot at the Attica Correctional Facility, remains an enduring and prescient lens through which to view our world.
WHEN: Monday, May 10, 5:00pm Pacific Daylight Time
WHERE: Live streamed from the SOU Music Recital Hall on the Oregon Center for the Arts YouTube Channel: youtube.com/OregonCenterForTheArts
FREE and open to the virtual public as a streaming concert.
The concert is produced by Left Edge Collective – a new music organization founded and directed by David Bithell and Terry Longshore at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University. Left Edge Collective composes, performs, improvises, creates interdisciplinary projects, and hosts an annual festival of contemporary performance which focuses on presenting and premiering new works by members of Left Edge, works by nationally recognized guest artists, and collaborations between artistic disciplines.
Bithell and Longshore will be joined by a cadre of established artists from Canada, Finland, Mexico, New Zealand, and the U.S. The featured artists are:
David Bithell, electronics/video (Ashland, Oregon, USA) – Interdisciplinary composer, artist, and performer exploring the connections between visual art, music, theater, and performance. Professor of Art and Emerging Media at Southern Oregon University.
Tessa Brinckman, flute (New Zealand/Ashland, Oregon, USA) – Interdisciplinary flutist, composer, and recording artist. Partner-in-crime with Terry Longshore in flute/percussion duo Caballito Negro.
Geoffrey Conquer, piano (Toronto, Canada) – Doctor of Musical Arts scholar at University of Toronto, faculty chamber music coach at The Royal Conservatory’s Phil and Eli Taylor Academy.
Fernando Dominguez, bass clarinet (Mexico City, Mexico) – Music faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), member of Ónix Ensemble and bass clarinet/percussion duo duplumwith Iván Manzanilla.
Aiyun Huang, percussion (Toronto, Canada) – Soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher and producer. Globally recognized since winning the 2002 First Prize and Audience Prize of the Geneva International Music Competition. Associate Professor of Music, University of Toronto.
Derek Keller, narrator (Ashland, Oregon, USA) – Composer/performer whose music explores hybridity between contemporary concert music, jazz and rock. Assistant Professor of Music at Southern Oregon University.
Terry Longshore, percussion (Ashland, Oregon, USA) – Genre-crossing performer, composer, and educator of percussion. Partner-in-crime with Tessa Brinckman in flute/percussion duo Caballito Negro. Professor and Chair of Music at Southern Oregon University.
Ivan Manzanilla, percussion (Guanajuato, Mexico) – Professor of percussion at University of Guanajuato. Soloist, chamber musician, and member of bass clarinet/percussion duo duplum with Fernando Dominguez.
Matti Pulkki, accordion (Finland/Toronto) – Master’s degree from the Sibelius Academy in Finland and currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Toronto. Member of Canadian crossover ensemble Quartetto Gelato.
YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5glrhkW3wII
