Bi-coastal duo Caballito Negro is known for its creative and compelling performances, generating an ecstatic blend of modern and traditional aesthetics. Multi-flutist Tessa Brinckman and multi-percussionist Terry Longshore draw their name (“dark little horse”) from Federico García Lorca’s poem, Canción de Jinete (1860). They collaborate with visionary artists, using an arsenal of instruments to push the artistic experience to new heights, and always in the spirit of duende.

Heralded for their “wildly personal, intercultural, modern music…vivid, expressive music that could be performed anywhere” (Oregon Arts Watch), the duo melds narratives, images, and themes in imaginative curations. Caballito Negro envisions true cultural exchange through innovative projects with local, regional, and international artists. Their first recording, the EP Songlines (2016), was praised for its “absolutely gorgeous tone”, “understated virtuosity” (Joshua Cheek) and being “expertly produced and played” (NFA Quarterly), featuring the music of William Kraft, David P. Jones and Ivan Trevino.

Numerous music collaborations, commissions and arrangements include the work of artists such as the “mad-scientist-of-music” Mark Applebaum, oud-master Ronnie Malley, percussionist Ivan Trevino, opera composer Bongani Ndodana Breen, former LA Philharmonic composer-in-residence William Kraft, and Princeton composer Juri Seo.

Caballito Negro also composes as a duo, synthesizing their eclectic musical dialects. Their work as resident artists has been featured at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Festival of New American Music, Britt Music & Arts Festival, as well as in many university, theater, and house concerts in the U.S. They share years of musical and life experience, in giving joint masterclasses to explore questions of intercultural exchange and hybrid forms.

Projects in 2024 include premiere performances in NYC, Baltimore, Princeton and Oregon, of Birds, Bees, Electric Fish, a newly commissioned work (and significant addition to the flute and percussion repertoire) from Juri Seo. The duo led this commission consortium in 2023, with 32 international participants. Caballito Negro is the recipient of both a grant from Chamber Music America’s Artistic Projects program (funded through the generosity of The Howard Gilman Foundation) and from UMEZ, for the NYC portion of the tour in October 2024. The duo will also release their single Bare White Bones, composed by Wally Gunn, and present new works written for them by Composers Concordance in NYC.

Interdisciplinary flutist/composer Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts” and “virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), an “excellent…flutist” (Willamette Week) and “highlight of Portland” (New Music Box), who “play(s) her instrument with great beauty and eloquence” (Music Matters New Zealand). Originally from 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-political 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). Both 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 18 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 upcoming projects include a February 2024 album release, Take Wing, Roll Back (New Focus Recordings), that embodies her personal and artistic connections to New Zealand, USA, South Africa and France; releasing several of her scores for various flutes and mixed media; guest artist collaborations in NYC (including concerts at Le Poisson Rouge and Roulette) and other new music concerts across the US; and recent support from a Bethany Arts Community Interdisciplinary Residency and New York Women Composers Seed Money Grant.

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.