IMPROV SPACES PRESENTS: THE WINTER/SPRING 2026 SEASON!

FEBRUARY

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February 9, 2026

JAAP BLONK
&
The Schanzer/Speach Duo

An Evening of Improvisations, Experimental Sounds and Collaborations
Voice . Electronics . Guitar . Piano

Join us for an evening celebrating experimental sounds, improvisation, and collaborations. The program will feature Dutch self-taught composer, performer, poet and visual artist Jaap Blonk performing his project Dr Voxoid‘s Next Move. The improvised voice and electronics performance ranges from sound poetry, invented languages to other unexpected soundscapes.

The Schanzer/Speach Duo is comprised of Upstate New York-based composer/guitarist Jeffrey Schanzer and pianist/composer Bernadette Speach, who have been working together in the experimental music scene with new music, improvisation and performance since the mid-1980s NYC. The pair have composed and performed their commissioned works across the US and internationally.

The performers will each present solo sets and join together in an original improvisation for this special program.

About the performers:
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Netherlands) is a self-taught composer, performer, poet and visual artist. His unfinished studies in mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. In the early 1980s he discovered the power and flexibility of his voice, and set out on a long-term research of phonetics and the possibilities of the human voice.

At present, he has developed into a specialist in the creation and performance of sound poetry and a unique vocal improviser, supported by a powerful and uninhibited stage presence. He has performed and taught around the world, on all continents. With the use of live electronics and sometimes projection of visuals the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.

Blonk’s recorded / published output comprises some 75 titles: CDs, vinyl, cassettes and books. From his sound poetry scores he developed an independent body of visual work, also supported by his renewed interest in mathematical procedures. It has been exhibited in various countries, and selections have been collected in books by publishers in Germany, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Sweden and Brazil. 

Schanzer/Speach Duo consists of Jeffrey Schanzer, composer/guitarist and Bernadette Speach, composer/pianist. Their collaborative works combine the intuition and spontaneity of improvisation with the structure of formal composition. The Duo had its premiere performance in October 1986 at Experimental Intermedia Foundation, New York City. Since that time, they have performed in New York at Roulette, St. Ann’s Church, the Knitting Factory, The Stone and Dia Center for the Arts, and in Newark, Hartford, Buffalo, Chicago, Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, Puerto Rico, Gent and Liege, Belgium, and Cologne and Herne, Germany. Dualities, the Duo’s first CD, was released on the Mode/Avant label in January 1992 and was picked as one of the top 10 recordings of 1992 by Robert Hicks in Jazziz magazine. The Duo has had works written for it by Lester Bowie, Kitty Brazelton, Michael Colquhoun, Fred Ho, Joseph Jarman, Oliver Lake, Tania León, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Betsy McClelland, William Ortiz, Wadada Leo Smith and Steven Swartz. Artists who have performed with the Duo include Lester Bowie, Thomas Buckner, Michael Colquhoun, Barbara Held, Joseph Jarman, Oliver Lake, Joelle Leandre, Fred Ho, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Myra Melford, David Pleasant, Bobby Previte, Alva Rogers, Ned Rothenberg, Wadada Leo Smith, Warren Smith, Libby Van Cleve and Jack Vees.

Schanzer also appears with his group The Jeffrey Schanzer Ensemble, which has brought together musicians such as Leroy Jenkins, Bobby Previte and Ned Rothenberg. His No More In Thrall, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald where his father was a prisoner, performed by the Sirius String Quartet with percussionist Kevin Norton, was released on the Composers Recording Inc. (CRI) label. Speach’s activities as a composer have included performances of Within, for piano and orchestra, by Ursula Oppens and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Les Ondes pour Quartre, premiered by the Arditti String Quartet in Darmstadt, Germany. In and Out of Love – after Liaisons and Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music, was premiered by Anthony de Mare, pianist and Artistic Director of “Liaisons: Re-imagining Sondheim from the Piano”, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, which commissioned the work. More recently Embrace the Universe (2001) for Orchestra, Chorus (SATB) and soloists: Mezzo-Soprano, Viola, Piano, with text: “Hymn to Matter” from The Divine Milieu by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was premiered in 2016 at the Teatro Petruzzelli, Bari, Italy. Her latest project, the opera The Little Rock Nine, a collaboration with librettist Thulani Davis, tells the story of nine students, ages 14 and 15, who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957-58.

MONDAY, February 9, 2026
TIME 7-9PM EST
LOCATION Saratoga Arts Theater at 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY
ADMISSION Tickets $20

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MARCH

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March 31, 2026

The Feral Hues of Ellie Irons
&
A Climate Meditation for Solo Drumset
with Curt Newton

An artist talk + workshop and performance at Saratoga Arts

Welcome the Spring with the work of Ellie Irons and Curt Newton as they each ask us to thoughtfully consider our relationships to our immediate environment and our relationship to the beyond human around us. This moment of the Eco Crisis —and how we respond to it— is an important one, both intimate to our lives and something we share more broadly.

Improv Spaces presents an evening artist talk and hands-on workshop to explore the Feral Hues project of Troy-based interdisciplinary artist Ellie Irons and a contemplative offering by Boston-based percussionist Curt Newton with his “A Climate Meditation for Solo Drumset” at Saratoga Arts.

Ellie Irons’s practice spans publicly engaged work — including with the artist collective the Environmental Performance Agency and her work with artist Anne Percoco as The Next Epoch Seed Library — to the nuanced paintings made from colors she creates from the berries, blossoms, and leaves of the plants from urban and disturbed habitats she creates with her Feral Hues project, online component, and book that is now on its third printing. She has previously brought the public on walking tours related to Feral Hues as part of her practice, and will be offering a hands on workshop and artist talk to open this special evening program.

The workshop will be followed by a performance by percussionist Curt Newton. Newton’s work ranges from free jazz ensemble work to his solo percussion. His performance “A Climate Meditation on Solo Drumset” has previously been performed at the MIT Chapel in 2024.

Climate Meditation for Solo Drumset (2024) 

His solo drumset work began in 1996, with his adaptation of Witold Lutoslawski’s String Quartet. His recent solo performances are completely improvised and he notes “often with a dedication to our miraculous yet threatened natural world and vibrant web of non-human relations.” We are excited to bring this performance with Iron’s workshop to the community to share these unique experiences with you and to think together about the quickly changing world in which we are enmeshed and our place within in it.

About the artists
Ellie Irons is an interdisciplinary artist based in current-day Troy, New York, where the Mahicannituck and Mohawk Rivers converge. She received an MFA from Hunter College and Phd from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute focused on ecosocial art. She is the Co-Director of NATURE Lab at the Sanctuary for Independent Media. Her book Feral Hues was published in 2023 by PS Hudson.
https://ellieirons.com/
https://www.mediasanctuary.org/

Boston-based percussionist Curt Newton coaxes whispers from drumsets and resonance from stacks of rattly stuff, weaving varied musical traditions in the spirit of dedicated playfulness. 

Over four decades, Curt has performed across North America and around the world and appears on scores of recordings with some of improvised music’s leading figures, including Ken Vandermark, Joe Morris, Nate McBride, Pandelis Karayorgis, Charlie Kohlhase, Eric Hofbauer, and Dave Bryant. About one live performance, the Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak wrote “Newton dazzles…He exhibited breathtaking restraint, breaking down time with a subtle hand, tapping out painterly splashes of sound.” Curt studied privately with Bob Gullotti, has a Master’s in Jazz Performance from New England Conservatory.

Complementing and spurring his music, Curt is also an active climate change community builder through volunteer work as an En-ROADS Climate Ambassador, a national convener for the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and the leadership team of the Boston Green New Deal Coaltion. Professionally, he’s Director of MIT OpenCourseWare, which supports millions of learners and educators around the world every year with free open-licensed learning materials from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Website: https://curtnewton.com

MONDAY, March 31, 2026
TIME 7-9PM EST
LOCATION Saratoga Arts Theater at 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY
ADMISSION Tickets $20 – purchase tickets here

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Current and Past Programs

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Please Consider to Donate to Improv Spaces in 2025!

This year Improv Spaces has been able to:
Support 7 Live Performances at Local Performance Venues
Run the Improv Sessions for Improvising Musicians and Collaborators
Debut the Improv Spaces Ensemble
Present the 2nd annual Improv Spaces Music Festival
Supporting more than 96 artists for Live Performances since we started
in Saratoga and the Greater Capital Region!
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Thanks for attending the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival!

The 2025 IMPROV SPACES MUSIC FESTIVAL
took place on June 7th, 2025 —
at the Round Lake Auditorium

FESTIVAL PROGRAM

We are so happy to have been able to host more than 30 musicians as a part of the 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival 
that took place at the Round Lake Auditorium on Saturday, June 7th, 2025 
with festival highlights that featured new work from the Human Rites Trio with renown musicians 
Jason Kao Hwang (composer, violin, viola), Andrew Drury (drum set), Ken Filiano (string bass);
the premiere of Sonic Explorations in Troy, an incubator project with the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall
with the Rock City Falls Trio and Manuel J. Perez III; and the debut of the Improv Spaces Ensemble;
along with an impressive roster of additional talented improvisers
hailing from the Capital Region and beyond!

Thanks to our sponsors!

Media Sponsors

Email improvspaces@gmail.com about sponsorship and volunteer opportunities for 2025 Improv Spaces Music Festival

Please watch this video on our 2024 Improv Spaces Music Festival and
Considering Supporting Improv Spaces for More Great Programs in 2025

For information about donating to Improv Spaces or sponsoring the 2025 festival, please visit us here.

More on Our Programs

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It was great to see you at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall on Febrary 25th for this special performance and discussion for
SONIC EXPLORATIONS IN TROY!

Photos by Kylie Spinelli Photography

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