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| | The Strangeness of Jazz
Edward George presents a live version of his podcast The Strangeness of Jazz, which focuses on drums and drumming—notably the drumming of Sly Dunbar, Lloyd Knibb, Al Jackson, and Earl Young, the concept of “the slip” or “mistake,” and its generative musical possibilities. The podcast will delve into historical and theoretical context of the subject, drawing from a wide selection of musical examples, played in their entirety. | | This show is only available via a Festival Pass |
| | And The Petals Burst Into Flames
そして花びらは燃え、散りゆく
IMA (Amma Ateria, electronics and Nava Dunkelman, percussion) perform a new set of explosive yet intimate music, employing the 39-speaker ambisonic system in EMPAC’s Studio 1. Experience their hauntingly expressive and extreme sound world in immersive spatialized audio. | | This show is only available via a Festival Pass |
| | Defiant Life
Virtuoso composer-performers Vijay Iyer (piano, Rhodes, electronics) and Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet) present Defiant Life, their latest collaboration “shaped by [their] ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year’s cruelties, but also by [their] faith in human possibility.” Their hourlong performance stages a passionate musical conversation centered around mortality, impermanence, and divinity, showing a rigorous and caring musical collaboration which expresses a deep human connection “spanning generations and nurtured over decades.” | Buy Tickets | |
| | Paris Syndrome
Following upon the success of her multimedia project Salon Mondialité, musician and artist Miho Hatori returns with the world premiere of an EMPAC-commissioned performance entitled Paris Syndrome. “Paris Syndrome” is a rare psychological condition in which visitors—most often from Japan—experience disorientation when reality fails to match their expectations of Paris. This multimedia performance installation, driven by sound and rooted in Hatori’s exploration of perception and consciousness, reimagines the condition as a story from the near future. A live work unfolding through sound, voice, and image—where the audience sits within a shifting field of sound and image, physically encountering how perception—often habitual—is shaped, and sometimes destabilized.
As boundaries between body, memory, and image begin to dissolve, the audience is drawn into a subtle yet shifting state of consciousness. Both poetic and quietly unsettling, Paris Syndrome moves between humor and disorientation. What if your sense of the world shifted, just slightly? | | This show is only available via a Festival Pass |
| | Improv Spaces
Born from the principles of collectivity, Troy, New York’s ImprovSpaces fosters dialogue and deep interdisciplinary collaboration through community-building and risk-taking. As an organization, ImprovSpaces is a resource for musicians to connect and perform in New York’s Capital and Saratoga regions. For TOPOS 2026, ImprovSpaces presents Rock City Falls Trio (Alex Chang, harp; Jason Handron, bass; Adam Forman, drums) and Sun Dogs (Adam Tinkle, woodwinds, electronics; Dominique Vuvan, accordion, electronics). | Buy Tickets | |
| | The Strangeness of Drumming
As a companion to his live podcast The Strangeness of Jazz, Edward George, on vocals and turntables, is joined by UK-based drummer and writer Paul Abbott to present a duo concert of improvised music stemming from Abbott’s deeply experimental 2025 album Slip but branching out into the realms of hip-hop and R&B. Bridging Abbott’s research with acoustic-digital hybrid drums and George’s investigations into the music of D’Angelo, J Dilla, and drummer Sly Dunbar, this performance is a musical exploration of time, tempo, and popular musical history. | | This show is only available via a Festival Pass |
| | A Page of Madness
Breathing new life into silent cinema, The Silent Light (Michael Formanski, guitar, electronics; Matt Hardy, drums) crafts scores inspired by black metal and doom metal to cast new possibilities onto classic films. TOPOS presents The Silent Light’s live soundtrack to Japanese director Teinosuke Kinugasa’s 1927 silent film A Page of Madness. A disturbing story of family torn apart by violence and mental illness, Kinugasa’s feverish and expressionist style are juxtaposed with The Silent Light’s vigorous and muscular score to create a 70-minute tour-de-force of sound and image. | | This show is only available via a Festival Pass |