Pioneer Live

At Pioneer Works on October 20, 2023, L’Rain performed "5 to 8 Hours a Day (WWwaG)" from I Killed Your Dog, as well as "Two Face" and “Find It” from her album Fatigue.

A community organizer, surrealist blues poet, and teacher, aja monet moves between mediums, and considers her work to be the process rather than some point of arrival. Her endgame is liberation, and her poems, music, and art serve as scribe of that struggle.

Incorporating musical structures similar to Tibetan, Byzantine, and Ethiopian chanting, OM is a three-piece experimental doom metal band hailing from San Francisco, California.

As NYC’s most transgressive and mysterious supergroup, Nu Jazz synthesizes a decade plus of six unique, yet naturally interconnected musical journeys.

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-oriented perception in sound.

The beguiling melodies of LEYA occupy a space between many worlds—mixing Medieval sensibilities with modern folk, classical, and pop. The duo is comprised by harpist Marilu Donovan, who uses a unique tuning system, and vocalist/violinist Adam Markiewicz, who blends operatic singing in multiple languages with warm string tones.

Hailing from the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band are a formidable force within capital city Ouagadougou’s underground music scene. Baba Commandant, the band’s enigmatic lead singer (Mamadou Sanou) plays the ngoni, a six-stringed instrument used by traditional hunters of the Burkina Faso region. The group’s Afrobeat style fuses modernity and heritage with a sensibility steeped in the Mandingue traditions of their ancestral legacy. Their sound is influenced by the likes of Fela Kuti, King Sunny Adé, and Malian growler Moussa Doumbia.

The solo project of classically trained vocalist Kristin Hayter, Lingua Ignota translates to “unknown language” in Latin. Under this moniker, Hayter fearlessly addresses themes of violence, misogyny, and revenge through survivor anthems wherein her vocals range from a delicate soprano to harsh shrieking. Her recordings, including 2019's Caligula and 2021's Sinner Get Ready, are ambitious, bracing blends of opera, power electronics, avant-metal, and folk influences. Watch Hayter's mesmerizing performance of “Man Is Like A Spring Flower”—one of her last as Lingua Ignota—live at Pioneer Works.

Former Psychic TV collaborator and member of the cult outfit Coil, Drew McDowall performs his haunting and meditative compositions in celebration of the exhibition BREYER P-ORRIDGE: We Are But One.

Former Pioneer Works Music Resident Nordra (Monika Khot) performs her vision of the future of pop—an incredibly intense mix of noise, electronic beats, her ethereal voice, and various live instruments—with "Transcendence 2" from her 2020 album "Pylon III."

Florist—the ambient folk band of Emily Sprague, Rick Spataro, Jonnie Baker, and Felix Walworth—performs "43" from "Florist" (2022) and "Vacation" from their EP "Holdly" (2015).

“All it takes is a flame.” Hyd (aka Hayden Dunham) performs the kaleidoscopic “Breaking Ground” from their new LP CLEARING, an album of dynamic, seductive, and texturally rich pop songs that signals a new dialogue of destruction and renewal.

black midi is the experimental rock band of Geordie Greep, Cameron Picton, and Morgan Simpson—joined here by touring members Seth Evans and Kaidi Akinnibi. On tour for the dynamic, hellacious, and inventive "Cavalcade," the London-based group performed a relentlessly frenetic set in Pioneer Work’s Mail Hall in October 2021.

FUJI||||||||||TA is a sound artist based in Japan. His unique sound art and music is inspired by various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and noises. Performing at Pioneer Works in October 2022, he introduced the element of water to his repertoire with sound synthesized water tanks.

In May 2021, celebrating the anniversaries of their first LP and EP, the Brooklyn-based indie rock band Beach Fossils performed a livestream of both albums in sequence, in their entireties, at Pioneer Works. Watch “Calyr" and “Adversity" from that performance.

Born out of the Myspace-DIY culture of the mid-aughts, Dreamcrusher has been releasing heart-stoppingly dense and beautiful soundscapes with fervor since 2003. Their self-described NIHILIST QUEER REVOLT MUSIK transcends the internet and is best experienced immediately and with open and mind and body. On July 7th, 2022, Brooklyn-based noise artist Dreamcrusher performed alongside Drew McDowall and Tval in a celebration of the life and legacy of Genesis Breyer-P-Orridge at Pioneer Works' Red Hook Labs. Experience the event in this video captured by Sean Hanley and Kristie Chua, and edited by Gabe Rubin.

Ata Kak is the Ghanaian electronic/rap/highlife icon who kick-started the Awesome Tapes From Africa phenomenon. He embarked on his first ever tour of the US in March 2022, including this performance with band members Pax Nindi, Akornefa Akyea, and Tim Tapsell at Market Hotel on April 1, 2022, produced by Pioneer Works.

Tuareg Avant-rock group Les Filles de Illighadad has released a music video for their new single "Irriganan." Edited by Jennifer Atalla, the video for "Irriganan" combines live footage of the band performing at Brooklyn venue Pioneer Works with archival clips of the band at home in Niger. "Irriganan" appears on Les Filles de Illighadad's upcoming album At Pioneer Works, out May 28th, 2021 on Sahel Sounds in collaboration with Pioneer Works Press.

Ragas Live Festival is an epic 24-hour, 24-set celebration of what The New York Times calls “the Raga Renaissance, flowering in Brooklyn.” Now in its ninth year, the immersive experience has expanded to include 70 artists from 13 cities, including the major torchbearers and creators of new genres such as Terry Riley, Toumani Diabate, Zakir Hussain, and Betsayda Machado. The event is rooted in Indian Classical Music and its unique time cycle in which specific musical modes are performed at specific times of day. Listeners and viewers will journey from Japan to Nepal to Madagascar as the musical offerings flow between traditional presentations and cross-cultural, genre-blurring collaborations.

Ragas Live Festival is an epic 24-hour, 24-set celebration of what The New York Times calls “the Raga Renaissance, flowering in Brooklyn.” Now in its ninth year, the immersive experience has expanded to include 70 artists from 13 cities, including the major torchbearers and creators of new genres such as Terry Riley, Toumani Diabate, Zakir Hussain, and Betsayda Machado. The event is rooted in Indian Classical Music and its unique time cycle in which specific musical modes are performed at specific times of day. Listeners and viewers will journey from Japan to Nepal to Madagascar as the musical offerings flow between traditional presentations and cross-cultural, genre-blurring collaborations.

Ragas Live Festival is an epic 24-hour, 24-set celebration of what The New York Times calls “the Raga Renaissance, flowering in Brooklyn.” Now in its ninth year, the immersive experience has expanded to include 70 artists from 13 cities, including the major torchbearers and creators of new genres such as Terry Riley, Toumani Diabate, Zakir Hussain, and Betsayda Machado. The event is rooted in Indian Classical Music and its unique time cycle in which specific musical modes are performed at specific times of day. Listeners and viewers will journey from Japan to Nepal to Madagascar as the musical offerings flow between traditional presentations and cross-cultural, genre-blurring collaborations.

Hiro Kone is the alias of Nicky Mao, a New York City-based musician and producer. Her most recent LP, Pure Expenditure, was released on Dais Records in 2018. Taking a deconstructive approach to music, she is known to draw upon a combination of modular synthesis, noise, field recordings, and her once abandoned violin training.

Hiro Kone and Roxy Farman present their collaboration born from a music residency at Pioneer Works.

The Resistance Revival Chorus was launched in the summer of 2017, born out of the Women’s March in D.C. and in response to the need to “bring joy to the resistance.” The collective is comprised of seventy professional singers, lifelong activists, and community-focused individuals who identify as women and non-binary. Last year they gave a stunning performance at the 37d03d Festival (People Fest) at Pioneer Works.

Fluct is the collaborative work of two artists addressing issues in the capital obedience of American culture through choreography and performance. Creating original narrative soundscapes linking a manipulated pop music psychosis with violently intimate dance, their composition is a projection driven to expose the psychology of social paradigm. Fluct’s work has been reviewed by FADER, Vice’s Creators Project, Purple Magazine, Topical Cream, among others. Their work has been shown at the Queens Museum, MOMA Ps1, and their first solo exhibition was held at Platform Gallery, Baltimore, MD in January of 2016. They produce their own large scale choreographed productions [Solar Solipsis,TransValue, ModelHome], collaborate with touring musicians including Pictureplane and MNDR, as well as run Otion Front Studio, a performance/dance space in the neighborhood of Bushwick in NY.

Spank Rock’s music reeks of freedom. His concept EP Bangers & Cash (2008), produced by fledgling pop producer Benny Blanco, paid homage to freedom fighter Uncle Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew. His self-released sophomore LP, Everything Is Boring And Everyone Is A Fucking Liar (2011), plays like Spank Rock’s initiation into superhero clan The Invisibles. Teleporting from Philly noise rock (“DTF DADT”), to German techno (“#1 Hit”), to New Orleans sissy bounce (“Nasty ft. Big Freedia”), swinging from the bawdy to the brazenly political, the album confirms Spank Rock’s commitment to creating music that is experimental, soulful and wild.

A dazzling collision of mesmeric light, color and sound, Red Bull Music Festival New York and Pioneer Works present the live reimagining of Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs’ seminal experiential invention, the dream machine. Described by Gysin as “the world’s first work of art designed to be viewed with eyes closed,” the dream machine brought about vivid hallucinations of brilliant color through the repeat exposure of high-intensity flicker light. In this immersive concert installation, multi-instrumentalist/composer Dave Harrington, musical director and chanteuse Sophia Brous and designers Wild Dogs International come together to create an extended live meditation on the landmark invention, combining high-intensity strobe, immersive lighting and ceiling projection and a live dream soundtrack performed by an exceptional, once-in-a-lifetime gathering of music luminaries.

Tom Zé is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer who was influential in the Tropicália movement of 1960s Brazil. After the peak of the Tropicália period, Zé went into relative obscurity: it was only in the 1990s, when the musician and label head David Byrne discovered an album recorded by Zé many years earlier, that he returned to performing and releasing new material.

POLIÇA's origin story begins in Minneapolis during 2011, when Ryan Olson, GAYNGS leader, producer and Minneapolis’ master of curation, began collaborating with Leaneagh on a batch of synthesizer and percussion-heavy arrangements he had lying around. Now, POLIÇA is a permanent fixture to the evolution of Pop music in the 2010's and on.

Daymé Arocena draws inspiration from the intertwining musical legacies of her native Cuba. A singer, composer, and choir director, she "unites cosmopolitan musicianship with deep roots,” according to The New York Times. She’s a bright-shining performer carrying the flame for a new generation of Cuban musicians.

engage the senses in deep modes of observation, using classical music as the medium for expanding, heightening, and investigating one’s perceptive capacities and for improving one’s skill of listening.

Simon Hanes founded Tredici Bacci, a 14 piece chamber-rock orchestra, as a vehicle by which to express his devotional obsession born out of his love for music in Italian films from the 1960s and 70s. Since then, the NY-based group has been performing their celebratory and transgressive approach to a largely overlooked musical lineage.

Blonde Redhead is an American alternative rock band composed of Kazu Makino (vocals, keys/rhythm guitar) and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace (drums/keys and lead guitar/bass/keys/vocals, respectively) that formed in New York City in 1993. Watch their 2017 performance at Pioneer Works.

Eclectic, outrageous, and sometimes mystifying but always imbued with a powerful jazz consciousness, the music of Sun Ra has withstood its skeptics and detractors for nearly three generations. Sun Ra was the first jazz musician to perform on electronic keyboards, the first to pursue full-scale collective improvisation in a big band setting, and his preoccupation with space travel as a compositional subject predated bands like Weather Report by about 15 years. As Sun Ra once said, “I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me.”

In a special performance highlighting the concurrent exhibition, The Present is the Form of All Life: The Time Capsules of Ant Farm and LST, Lower Dens and Ornament (Joe DeNardo) perform around the Ant Farm/LST inflatable. Lower Dens is an American indie pop band from Baltimore, Maryland.

Angel Deradoorian, also known as Deradoorian, is an LA-based musician that has been cultivating her solo career after her famous work with Dirty Projectors. Deradoorian welcomes the live audience in the inaugural concert in a collaborative concert series as part of the exhibition Grand Ole Opera.

Over the course of its two-decade existence, Lightning Bolt has revolutionized underground rock in immeasurable ways. The duo broke the barrier between stage and audience by setting themselves up on the floor in the midst of the crowd. This program is part of the exhibition Grand Ole Opera.

The Hammerheads are pushing the boundaries of punk and looking to take it to interesting new places. Their albums Go Home and Stay Home, both released on New York label Toxic State, have become modern classics.

Wolf Eyes are the rabid beasts of Trip Metal & have been plowing thru new tunnels of the underworld since 1997. Born in the dead, dread-filled haunted hills of Michigan, Nate Young, John Olson and James Baljo temper pure audio stunn of homemade post-nuclear terror & claustrophobic atmospheres to produce a shattered and confusing horrorvision since Bo Diddley dropped the duct taped warhead on all humans in 2024.. Wolf Eyes is total music/trip mental: equally at home within but also apart from the worlds of electronic music, street shadows,and musique concrete among others. A discography of over 150 releases, relentless touring, and endless creativity ranging from visual art to creating new instruments has served to make Wolf Eyes a lone primal planet adrift and dribbling in a universe of hunted enemies. This program is part of the exhibition Grand Ole Opera.

Black Pus is the one-man band of Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale. This Pioneer Live special at the Grand Ole Opry proves why Lightning Bolt has revolutionized underground rock in immeasurable ways. Black Pus breaks the barrier between stage and audience by setting themselves up on the floor in the midst of the crowd.

The New York City punk band Show Me the Body know something you don’t – you have to "Do It Yourself". For the last 2 years, Show Me the Body has been working on the fringes of the NYC music scene cultivating inclusive experiences for the youth and beyond.

For The Toward is a performance of graceful athleticism deconstructed into raw energy. It is an expression of relentless, human physicality straining against crushing weight. Two performers coax, ride, and hurl steel sculptures together to create a bearable environment in which to balance rest and labor. For the toward has undergone multiple transformations and revelations since its inception in 2014. It has been presented nationally, from proscenium stages to asphalt lots in the Midwest, always responding to and morphing according to site and circumstance. Most recently, For the toward was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, as part of the traveling Merce Cunningham retrospective exhibition Common Time, where it was performed upon steel-surface plinths elevated 20 feet above the ground. For the toward has also been presented at Pulse Art Fair in Miami, and was curated by SiTE:LAB to participate in ArtPrize7, where it shortlisted as 1 of 20 juried finalists for the Grand Jury Prize. This presentation at Pioneer Works—upon the staggering weight of imported solid steel road plates—marks For the toward’s New York City premiere.

Four-time Grammy Award winner Esperanza Spalding has, in the past decade of her illustrious career (which also involves having performed at the Oscars, the Grammys, the Nobel Prize ceremony, and several times at the White House), continually and brilliantly married genres, pushed boundaries, and created groundbreaking work. Spalding returns to Pioneer Works on the heels of her highly successful recent 77 hour Facebook Live new album creation, Exposure.

Pedestrian Deposit, the collaborative work of Jonathan Borges and Shannon Kennedy, is highly composed, often abstract sound textures combined to create dynamic experimental music that draws on the duo’s widely contrasting auditory obsessions. They have consistently toured the United States nearly every year since 2008, placing an emphasis on the development and evolution of physical, psychological, and organic live performance.

During the golden years of Ethiopian music, as documented in the Ethiopique series, Hailu Mergia was Ethiopia’s most popular keyboard player. He was also the bandleader for the legendary Walias Band. His new project, performed live at Pioneer Works, is a trio with DC-based musicians Alemseged Kebede and Kenneth Joseph.

Quay Dash is a rapper and a solo artist from the Bronx, New York City. Her work looks into her experiences as a black transgender woman living in modern day America. Quay has performed and DJ’ed at nightclubs, concert venues, and art galleries across the United States and Canada and her first project, her EP “Transphobic” was released in September 2016. Quay promptly joined Peaches for her North American tour after the release of her EP and she currently lives on the Lower East Side, in Manhattan.

One of the UK’s most unpinnable emerging producers and performers, Klein has an often playful and unruly approach to composition which is instantly alluring. Samples of obscure Nigerian B-Movies clatter into jagged beats; distant piano loops lurk in the haze whilst beguiling vocals fade in and out of the sensory world she has created. In 2016 she released her debut album Only (self-released online and later on heart-shaped diamond USB stick by DIY label Howling Owl Records) and more recently the Lagata EP. She has been featured in Wonderland, Dazed and Confused Magazine, and Wire; i-D magazine premiered the beautiful video for ‘Marks Of Worship‘ (dir. Akinola Davies JR), a stunning five-minute piece of murky ambience dominated by a Whatsapp sermon sent from a Nigerian Aunt. You would expect nothing less from Klein.

MSHR is a collaborative project by Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo builds and explores systems as a way of manifesting ecstatic sensory zones. They work at the intersection of digital sculpture, analog hardware and ceremonial performance. Their current performance series revolves around a unique system of light-audio feedback that employs their hand made synthesizers.

PAF was established in 2000 and is a Czech platform for moving image, animation, and contemporary art. PAF organizes yearlong dramaturgical and production activities, curatorial exhibitions, projections, and workshops, and publishes books within its own Edition PAF. Its main output is PAF—Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art held annually in Olomouc, Czech Republic

Miho Hatori is a Japanese singer, songwriter, and musician. She is primarily known as the vocalist of the New York City group Cibo Matto. She is also known for her work with virtual band Gorillaz.

Peter Evans is a trumpet player and improvisor/composer based in New York City. Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation; his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, Evans works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. He leads the Peter Evans Quintet and the Zebulon trio, is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta), and is constantly experimenting and forming new configurations with like-minded players. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation’s Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation for the 2015 Newport Jazz Festival. Evans has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide and tours his own groups extensively. He has worked with some of the leading figures in new music: John Zorn, Kassa Overall, Jim Black, Weasel Walter, Levy Lorenzo, Nate Wooley, Steve Schick, Mary Halvorson, Joe McPhee, George Lewis, and performs with both ICE and the Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been releasing recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011.

Taylor Ho Bynum has spent his career navigating the intersections between structure and improvisation — through musical composition, performance, and interdisciplinary collaboration, and through production, organizing, teaching, writing, and advocacy. Bynum’s expressionistic playing on cornet and his expansive vision as a composer have garnered him critical attention on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and dozens more as a sideman. Taylor Ho Bynum goes electric with a new quintet of old friends, featuring “brassy noise over off-center groove, with a purple hue.” Taylor Ho Bynum’s Rank Sentimentalist includes Bynum (cornet), Marika Hughes (cello), Evan Patrick (electric guitar) Stomu Takeishi (bass guitar), and Chad Taylor (drums).