Auricle New Music Series welcomes Jon Mueller/Matt Blair/Ro Lundberg on Friday, October 16, 2026 at 7:00pm. Doors open 6:30pm. Admission is free, but please RSVP:
Auricle Presents: Jon Mueller/Matt Blair/Ro Lundberg
Jon Mueller’s singular performance idiom is an awe-inspiring display of elegant athleticism, preternatural focus, brute restraint, and ecstatic, monastic reverie.
Mueller’s approach requires and demands a state of inner quietude from witnesses. Yet, from his seemingly metronomic exercise blossoms every possible tint and hue of infinite spectral sound.
“My connection to playing drums is to use them to enter a different state of mind. What may seem like an escape is actually bringing an energy or feeling into a room. That energy is something I can’t really define, but it is distinct. Achieving it is the basis of quality by which I analyze my work. Ultimately, the construction of performances and the arrangement of sound in recordings, is to create an experience with that energy.”
Mueller studied jazz drumming with Hal Russell at Columbia College in Chicago, and singing with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music in New York. A... Read More
Matt Blair is a pianist, composer, and educator who recently returned to Madison, WI. His work draws upon diverse musical traditions such as contemporary classical, electro-acoustic improvisation, free jazz, minimalism, and noise. In addition to his practice as a pianist, he incorporates extended electronic processing of the Fender Rhodes, synthesizers, and the computer in his music.
Since 2018, Matt has been releasing music on his label, Scribbled Fang Records. Recent releases have included Shadow Sets, a collection of compositions for solo piano that was produced by Dave King (The Bad Plus, Happy Apple), Post Rock Lately, the debut record of Collector, an improvising trio featuring Jakob Heinemann on bass and Devin Drobka on drums and electronics, and Flights and Poor Health Good Spirits, both releases by Big Thanks, a Minneapolis-based Trash House trio featuring Miles Allen on saxophone and clarinet and Jack Lussenden on drums. Other recent releases have included After... Read More
Ro(b)//ert Lundberg is a water drinker ~ infrastructural thinker ~ music, word, and image tinkerer. Through shifting rhythms in sound, language, and video, they attempt to reorient audiences to more-than-human relations hiding in plain site. Drawing sonic inspiration from the glitch minimalism of Ryoji Ikeda, the tuneful experimentalism of Arthur Russell, and the engrossing trance of Hamid el Kasri, Lundberg builds performances that unsettle presumed relations to pipes, property, pollution.
Now based in Chicago, they have performed internationally at venues and festivals such as Big Ears, Roulette Intermedium, Norwegian BioArt Arena, and CURRENTS New Media Festival. They perform solo and in outfits ranging from improvising ensembles to art rock bands HIGHSIGH and JOBS, with collaborators including John Dieterich, Max Jaffe, Lia Kohl, Matt Mehlan, Ryan Packard, Jessica Pavone, Cyrus Pireh, Zander Raymond, and Dave Scanlon. They studied music at The New School and law and... Read More
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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are normally open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.