TAK Editions Podcast
by TAK Editions Podcast
Conversations with composers and other musicians working in the vibrant new music community of New York City and beyond. Episodes are curated by and often feature members of TAK, an ambitious ensemble that “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity — and, well, just a dash of IDGAF as they slay the thorniest material like it’s nothing” (WQXR).
Episodes
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047. Mattie Barbier (RAGE THORMBONES), Shara Lunon (Blasé), Russell Greenberg (Yarn/Wire)
Welcome to this special triple episode with three of our Swoonfest artists! Charlotte speaks with Mattie Barbier of Rage Thormbones, Shara Lunon of Blasé and Russell Greenberg of Yarn/Wire about the exciting performances that they are bringing to TAK’s very own festival, Swoonfest, on Sept. 12…
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046. Victoria Cheah and Mobéy Lola Irizarry (Las Mariquitas)
Welcome to this special double episode with two of our Swoonfest artists! Charlotte speaks with Victoria Cheah and Mobey Lola Irizarry of Las Mariquitas about the exciting performances that they are both bringing to night 2 of TAK’s very own festival, Swoonfest, on Sept. 13. Get tickets for...
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045. Levi Lu and Jennae Santos (Gushes)
Welcome to this special double episode with two of our Swoonfest artists! Charlotte speaks with Levi Lu and Jennae Santos about the exciting performances that they are each bringing to night 1 of TAK’s very own festival, Swoonfest, on Sept. 12 2025 at the Dimenna Center in NYC. To jump to…
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044. Seare Ahmad Farhat
Laura and Charlotte speak with composer, performer, and TAK 2024 season collaborator, Seare Ahmad Farhat about silence, the magic of chamber music, spirituality and poetry. Donate to TAK at www.takensemble.com/support TAK will be premiering Seare’s piece “Bring me your Silence” on December 3rd,...
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043. Zeynep Toraman
Madison and Marina speak with composer, performer, and TAK 2024 season collaborator, Zeynep Toraman. Their conversation goes deep into the nature and motivations of artistic practice, literature, identity, and much more. TAK will be premiering Zeynep's piece "Veils" on December 3rd, 7:30pm at the...
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042. Seth Cluett
Charlotte and Laura speak with sound artist, composer and performer Seth Cluett about his new works for TAK, 'irreversible histories of disturbance' and 'the reformation of assemblages.' The conversation includes thoughts about making music at the pace of nature, alternative notation systems, and...
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Announcing: TAKs Haven!
A very special announcement from TAK Ensemble.
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041. Modesto "Flako" Jimenez
Charlotte and Madison speak with poet, playwright, educator, actor, producer, and director Modesto "Flako" Jimenez about his site-specific theatre work originally inspired by his Bushwick neighborhood, Taxilandia, and multidisciplinary theatrical work Mercedes. for more about ¡Oye! Group:...
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040. Kurt Rohde And Marie Lorenz
On this episode, Charlotte speaks with composer and performer Kurt Rohde and visual artist Marie Lorenz about the site-specific opera Newtown Odyssey, written for and about NYC's Newtown Creek. for more about the opera: https://www.newtownodyssey.com/ About Kurt Rohde: https://www.kurtrohde.com/...
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039. Kamala Sankaram
On this episode, Charlotte speaks with composer and performer Kamala Sankaram about her recent site-specific works. 'The Buried Brook' is a soundwalk that follows the currently buried Tibbets Brook in the Bronx, and 'The Last Stand' is an experimental opera and sound installation for trees. About...
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038. Bryan Jacobs
On this episode, Charlotte and Laura speak with Bryan Jacobs in advance of TAK’s premiere of his piece ‘Organic Synthesis Volume 2’ on Thursday Dec. 7, 2023. To hear more of Bryan’s music, go to https://soundcloud.com/bryanjacobs-1 Please contribute to TAK’s year-end fundraiser at...
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037. sinonó
On this episode, Marina speaks with the members of sinonó, who will be joining us in concert this Saturday Oct. 7 at the Dimenna Center in New York City. sinonó is a brief submergence, a string of choices, a container for the communion of rigor and failure. This NYC-based trio, featuring Isabel...
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036. Phong Tran
Marina and Charlotte speak with Phong Tran about growing up on the internet, collaboration and simulation theory. Phong opened SWOONFEST, our tenth anniversary festival, one month ago today with a set of brand new original music created live on analog and modular synthesizers. The music from this...
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035. Michelle Lou
This week, Madison and Marina speak with Michelle Lou. TAK will be premiering Michelle's new work "In a Forest" on night 2 of SWOONFEST, May 5 + 6 at The Clemente on Manhattan's Lower East Side. For more information and to reserve your tickets, visit www.takensemble.com/swoonfest The music from...
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034. Sour Spirit
This week on the podcast, Madison and Ellery interview Rodnie King and Riot Dent of Sour Spirit, a chaos noise rock duo based in Philadelphia. Sour Spirit will close out night 2 of SwoonFest, TAK’s festival celebrating our 10th anniversary, May 5th and 6th at The Clemente in NYC. For tickets…
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033. Natacha Diels
On this episode composer and performer Natacha Diels speaks with Ellery and Charlotte about electronics, collaboration, friendship, AI, fun and high stakes. Natacha will play her solo set Somewhere Beautiful (with assistance from TAK) on SWOONFEST, celebrating TAK’s tenth anniversary, happening…
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032. Chris Williams
On this episode, Chris Williams speaks with Marina and Madison about time travel, the ethics of collaborating with the dead, and the spirituality of building a practice of breathing as a wind player. Chris will perform a solo set at SWOONFEST, a festival celebrating TAK’s tenth anniversary,...
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031. gabby fluke-mogul
On this episode, gabby fluke-mogul speaks with Laura and Charlotte about their work as an improviser, and how it relates to embodiment, infinite matrices of time and space, form, feeling, and boundaries. gabby will play in a trio with Tcheser Holmes and Mara Rosenbloom on SWOONFEST, a festival...
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30. hope lies fallow with Keir GoGwilt and Johnny Chang
In this episode, Madison speaks with Johnny Chang and Keir GoGwilt about their album ‘hope lies fallow’, which was released on Another Timbre. The conversation encompasses their recompositions of Orlando di Lasso and Hildegard von Bingen, the sociological resonances of chamber music, instant…
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029. Lizard Tongue with Nina Dante and Bethany Younge
“My belief is that music was sort of a mediation between humanity and the wild world; a way of speaking back to the world that speaks so many languages.” In this week’s episode, Charlotte and Laura speak with Nina Dante and Bethany Younge about their album Lizard Tongue, released a year ago on…
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028. Catherine Lamb
“It is the act of people being together, and finding that space together that I find most fascinating, and it’s the most difficult thing, I feel like I’m still learning how to do that and will be trying to do that for the rest of my life”. In this week’s episode, Marina and Madison speak with...
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027. Eric Wubbels
Charlotte and Laura speak with Eric Wubbels about the piece he's writing for TAK, titled 'Interbeing'. They talk about making music that responds on a deep level to what's going on in the world, about how debating with friends helps you to forge your own creative voice, how food relates to music,...
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026. Announcing: Love, Crystal and Stone
Announcing TAK's newest release, Love Crystal and Stone! Ashkan Behzadi’s composition stretches musical lyricism to its limit, imagining an impossibly radical, revolutionary folk music that pushes the individual and collective virtuosity of TAK ensemble to new heights. This concert length work is…
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025. Weston Olencki
In this week's episode, Marina and Madison interview Weston Olencki about his upcoming album "Old Time Music," coming out this spring on Tripticks Tapes. They also talk about Weston's relationship to country music, AI and machine learning, and more. The music on today's episode is from "Old Time...
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024. Jatin Mohan
In this episode, we’re continuing a series of episodes focused on tuning practices, in celebration of Star Maker Fragment’s first birthday! Today, Marina and Taylor speak with musicologist Jatin Mohan. Jatin is a Fulbright Scholar from New Delhi, India, studying at the CUNY Graduate Center. His...
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023. Jeffrey Gavett
On this episode we’re celebrating Star Maker Fragment’s birthday with vocalist and composer Jeffrey Gavett! A founding member of Loadbang and Ekmeles, and longtime collaborator of Taylor Brook, Jeff joins Taylor and Charlotte to talk about microtonal music, collaboration and digital nonsense.…
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022. Laura Cocks' Field Anatomies
On this episode we celebrate the release of ‘field anatomies,’ a collection of blisteringly physical works for flutes and electronics, featuring flutist and fearless leader of TAK, Laura Cocks. Laura and Charlotte Mundy speak with the composers featured on the album– David Bird, Bethany Younge,...
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Rebroadcast: Episode .019 with Julien Malaussena
We're rebroadcasting this episode in preparation for the TAK ensemble music video drop of "8 minutes after boiling" by Julien Malaussena. Check it out on Sunday, October 31st at 4pm (or any time thereafter) at the following link: https://youtu.be/OO6qJKWsckY *** Julien Malaussena considers his...
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021. DM R and James Diaz
This week, we’re hearing from Diana Marcela Rodriguez, aka DM R, and James Diaz. They’ll give us a preview of a roundtable discussion they had with Jose Martinez from their group C3, the Columbian Composers Collective, alongside violinist Natalie Calma. This summer, we’ll air their full...
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020. Playlist
Today's episode is a playlist of music we love. 0:48 CIHUANAHUALLI: Tlacualo (devorado / devoured) by Carmina Escobar 7:05 Delirious Delicacies by Nick Dunston 12:03 Pequeño tótem by Wilfrido Terrazas 18:20 and Dorothy never looked back by Patrick Shiroishi and Dylan Fujioka 25:41 7 fish in a...
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019. Julien Malaussena
Julien Malaussena considers his compositional prism to be sound energy–not timbre nor time; not dynamics, pitch, nor the sound space, but rather this element straddling all of these, one less palpable, less quantifiable. He has been particularly influenced by the teaching of Chaya Czernowin and...
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018. Charlotte Mundy
Charlotte Mundy is a vocalist who specializes in music that is new, daring and sublime. She has been called a "daredevil with an unbreakable spine" (SF Classical Voice). Recent performances include George Benjamin’s one-act opera Into the Little Hill at the 92nd Street Y and a set of music for...
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017. Jessie Cox and Isaac Jean-François
This week, Isaac Jean-François interviews Jessie Cox about his TV series, "Space Travel from Home." About Jessie: “...some of the most experimental music of not just the day but the season... held a listener’s attention with surprises and delights aplenty.“ — LA Times Jessie Cox is a composer,...
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016. Star Maker with Taylor Brook, Lara Lewison, and Brad Garton
In this week's episode, Brad Garton interviews composer Taylor Brook and multi-media artist Lara Lewison about Star Maker Fragments, the new album from TAK Ensemble, out 3/3/2021. Lara Lewison creates audiovisual art for the web and for live performance, with a focus in networking, language, and...
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015. Brandon Lopez and Gerald Cleaver
Brandon Lopez is a bassist/improviser/composer who works at the intersection of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. He has been an artist-in-residence at Roulette and Issue Project Room, performed as a soloist with the NYPhilharmonic and in ensembles with Fred Moten, Okkyung Lee…
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014. Bethany Younge and Merche Blasco
Bethany Younge’s acoustic and electronic music explores the manifold kinesthetic properties of musical performance. For her, the act of music-making cannot be divorced from the physical presence of the human instigator. Her works often incorporate instrumental deconstruction, exaggerated…
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013. Ashkan Behzadi, Saharnaz Samaeinejad, and Alan Woods
This week on the podcast, Ashkan Behzadi and Saharnaz Samaeinejad interview Marxist political theorist Alan Woods about art and socialism. Alan Woods was born in 1944 in Swansea, South Wales, into a working-class family with strong Communist traditions. At the age of 16 he joined the Labour Party...
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012. Devon Osamu Tipp and Chatori Shimizu
Shaped by sonic sensitivity from a young age, Pittsburgh based composer/performer/artist Devon Osamu Tipp creates unorthodox musical environments from ostensibly incompatible realms. Tipp’s music draws influence from his Japanese and Eastern European roots, his experiences as a jeweler and…
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011. Hannah Kendall and Elaine Mitchener
Hannah Kendall is a composer whose work has been described as ‘…intricately and skillfully wrought’ by The Sunday Times. Her music has attracted the attentions of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Singers, Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, with performances at the...
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Heads Up! TAK Editions Podcast is Back!
This is a friendly lil teaser for some upcoming episodes of the TAK Editions Podcast! Every Tuesday for the next five weeks will feature conversations between a recent TAK collaborator and a guest of their choosing. We are so grateful to all of our guests for contributing their time and thoughts…
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010. Marina Kifferstein
Marina Kifferstein is a violinist, composer, and a founding member of TAK ensemble and The Rhythm Method string quartet. She also performs regularly Talea, Wet Ink, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, and is a co-administrator of the Open Improvisations concert series. As a composer her...
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009. Madison Greenstone
Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist currently based between San Diego and New York City. Her creative practice encompasses contemporary & experimental music, improvisation, noise & acoustic feedback, and band-like collaborations with other creative performers. She has performed as a featured…
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008. Tyshawn Sorey
Tyshawn Sorey is a multi-instrumentalist and composer born in Newark, New Jersey, known for his mastery and memorization of incredibly complex scores. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as artists such as Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, John Zorn…
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007. Natacha Diels
Natacha Diels is a composer and performer whose work combines choreographed movement, improvisation, video, instrumental practice, and cynical play to create worlds of curiosity and unease. With a focus on collage, collaboration, and the ritual of life as art, her compositions have been described...
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006. Erin Gee
Erin Gee is a composer and vocalist who has created, in her Mouthpiece series, an ephemeral world that expands the possibilities of the voice, leaving behind the constrictive structure of language, and replacing histrionic female vocals with a virtuosic mouth and a tabula rasa for an emotional...
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005. Ashkan Behzadi
Ashkan Behzadi’s music combines a miniaturist lyrical craft with an aim to invoke the collective-memory of folklore music through the use of allusion and pastiche. The question of genre-identity and genre-blurring and, in particular, the relationship between modern lyric and contemporary music is...
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004. Ann Cleare
Ann Cleare is a composer whose work explores the static and sculptural nature of sound, probing the extremities of timbre, texture, colour, and form. She creates highly psychological and corporeal sonic spaces that encourage a listener to contemplate the complexity of the lives we exist within,...
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003. David Bird
David Bird is a composer and multi-media artist based in New York City. His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and mixed media environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the individual, and has been performed internationally by some of the best...
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002. Brandon Lopez
Brandon Lopez is a New York-based composer and bassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. His music has been praised as “brutal” (Chicago Reader) and “relentless” (The New York Times). On this episode, Ellery and Madison of TAK talk to Brandon about his new...
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001. Bethany Younge
Bethany Younge is a composer and performer whose work plays with anti-irony, nonsense as spiritual awakening, and the place between situations and theater. She builds incredibly individualized works, often simultaneously centered in the physiological dramaturgy of performance. On this episode,...
About this show
Conversations with composers and other musicians working in the vibrant new music community of New York City and beyond. Episodes are curated by and often feature members of TAK, an ambitious ensemble that “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity — and, well, just a dash of IDGAF as they slay the thorniest material like it’s nothing” (WQXR).
Hosted by
TAK Editions Podcast
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