Auricle New Music Series welcomes the Matt Blair Trio opening for Emily Beisel on Tuesday, May 12, 2026 at 7:00pm.
Emily Rach Beisel's spring tour features music from the upcoming solo record, Sumptuous Branching, to be released in April 2026. The performance blends bass clarinet, voice, and analog electronics, moving between composed material and open forms. It balances song-based structures with dense, heavy textures drawn from doom metal and experimental sound worlds. Acoustic and processed sounds are layered in real time, creating an immersive listening environment that shifts between intensity and quiet, meditative moments.
Matt Blair Trio & Emily Beisel
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
Devin Drobka is one of the most in-demand and creative musicians in the midwest for the past 15 years. Audiences around the world have been enthralled with his wide sonic palette and limitless rhythmic possibilities on the drums. A deep love of jazz, metal, folk, hip-hop, ambient, idm, and classical music has helped shaped Devin’s unique voice and vision on the drums both as a leader and as a sideman. His highly personal and creative drumming can be heard within the realm of jazz having performed with Greg Osby, Jerry Bergonzi, Dayna Stephens, and Joe Lovano as well as indie- folk bands like Field Report and indie rappers R.A.P. Ferreira and Serengeti. Devin can be heard on over 50 albums of genre bending, original music for which he is an advocate for. Devin currently composes music for his newest group, The Devin Drobka Trio, which draws upon his love of contemporary classical music and minimalism and his multi horn group, Bell Dance Songs, which is a response to his love of... Read More
Originally from Long Island, NY, bassist Brian Courage has spent the last decade as an integral part of the creative music scenes in Minneapolis, Brooklyn, and now Chicago, where he currently resides. He has performed alongside an extensive array of nationally acclaimed improvisers, including Greg Ward, Jon Irabagon, Lew Tabackin, David Hazeltine, Jason Stein, Weasel Walter, Michael Lewis, Erik Fratzke, Russ Johnson, JT Bates, and Billy Mintz. Brian is adept at a wide range of styles and has performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, renowned vocal quartet The Four Freshmen, the Chicago Tap Theater, and the New York based Americana / blues rock band Hollis Brown, with whom he toured the US and Europe extensively. His most recent creative endeavor is Abhorrent Expanse, a fully improvised metal band. Their debut album "Gateways to Resplendence" has been featured in prominent outlets including Decibel, Metal Injection, Burning Ambulance, and Wire Magazine.
Emily Rach Beisel is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, educator, curator, and woodwind specialist whose work is celebrated for its visceral intensity and innovative blend of techniques. Beisel’s 2023 solo album, Particle of Organs, has been described as “heavy stuff, sounds retrieved from the deeper places - the underworlds, the lightless subterranea... a raw, abrasive, oppressive, and thrilling journey (A Jazz Noise).” Beisel's music centers on the bass clarinet and incorporates voice, electronics, extended techniques, and other wind instruments creating a complex and nuanced soundscape in which the origins of sounds are often obscured.
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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
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