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!

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.

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