events

thingNY plays raven chacon

4/13/2026

Members of thingNY, joined by Olivia Shortt (Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation, Ireland) perform vocal, instrumental, and electronic works by Raven Chacon (Diné) including the thingNY co-commission Wave Upon Wave (2023) and For Zitkála-Šá (2017-2020). This evening will also feature a solo set by Raven.

MON APR 13 @ 7pm

TICKETS
$22.47

New Ear
Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery
NYC
7:00 pm

Raven Chacon
For Zitkála-Šá (2017-2020)
Wave Upon Wave (2023)
solo electronics set

Gelsey Bell
Isabel Castellvi
Raven Chacon
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Dave Ruder
Olivia Shortt

Raven Chacon ensemble

4/11/2026

Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music and a MacArthur Fellowship, Diné composer and sound artist Raven Chacon is known for poetic works that summon a sense of landscape, space and spirit. Experience an evocative, unique sound world when Chacon and colleagues from thingNY perform an evening of his recent chamber and conceptual compositions, and the world premiere of his 2025 commission from the Library’s Strickland Fund. 
Rescheduled from December 6, 2025.
Pre-concert Conversation with the Artists
Whittall Pavilion, 6:30 pm

SAT APR 11 @ 8pm

TICKETS ARE FREE
WITH RSVP
loc.gov

Library of Congress
Thomas Jefferson Building
Coolidge Auditorium
10 1st St SE
Washington DC

Raven Chacon
For Zitkála-Šá (2017-2020)
Wave Upon Wave (2023)
world premiere (2025)

Gelsey Bell
Isabel Castellvi
Raven Chacon
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Dave Ruder
Olivia Shortt

mano a mano: an operatic monodrama

2/12/2026

Plucked from the tradition of the medieval storytelling bard, MANO A MANO is an operatic monodrama about toxic masculinity, needling Anglo-Saxon epics with personal anecdote, pseudo-history, Antonio Banderas movies, tangents about the Romans, boxing, and stories about New Jersey.

Writer/performer Paul Pinto embodies all the characters across a five-octave range of timbres: sweet, throaty and viscerally guttural. Posing the question "what if Sir Gawain and Beowulf were fighting over killing the same dragon?" he answers with ninety minutes of virtuosic chants, rants, song and spectacle, as he bobs and weaves between passages of puckishly quick verbiage and aching melancholia. Director Kristin Marting stages it in the round with the audience immersed in the action, surrounded by a mix of wild saxophone and percussion improvisation.

Award-winning designers Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew and Philip White, and virtuoso thingNY bandleader Erin Rogers reunite for the first time since Pinto's 2017 operatic debut Thomas Paine in Violence.

THU FEB 12 @ 7pm
FRI FEB 13 @ 7pm
SAT FEB 14 @ 7pm
SUN FEB 15 @ 2pm
MON FEB 16 @ 7pm
THU FEB 19 @ 7pm
FRI FEB 20 @ 7pm
SAT FEB 21 @ 7pm
SUN FEB 22 @ 2pm

TICKETS
$10-75

SHOW PAGE

La MaMa
Ellen Stewart Theater
66 E 4th Street
New York NY

MANO A MANO: an operatic monodrama
[world premiere]
by Paul Pinto

Performed by
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Dennis Sullivan
Zach Herchen

Developed with and Directed by Kristin Marting

Lighting and Projection design by
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew

Sound Design and Mixing by
Philip White

jerome kitzke: i wonder if this ground has anything to say

10/16/2025

Tribeca New Music and Kaufman Music Center present the world premiere of Jerome Kitzke’s epic new work, I Wonder If This Ground Has Anything to Say (A Treaty Illumination). With a 24-section libretto built by Kitzke from litanies of definitions, dates, names, places, and historic quotations—from Red Jacket to an unlikely Richard Nixon—the work sheds light on the existence of Treaties and Agreements made between the Indigenous Nations and the White Europeans/U.S. Government from 1613 to today. The Treaties made between 1775 and 1871 are still constitutionally the Law of the Land, and have often not been fully honored, especially in the areas of land base, education and health care. Kitzke’s musical illumination arrives as a fierce and timely reminder of the enduring legal and moral obligations set forth in the Treaties.

THU OCT 16 @ 7:30pm

Kaufman Music Center
Merkin Hall
129 W 67th Street
New York NY

TICKETS

I wonder if this ground has anything to say (A Treaty Illumination)
[world premiere]
by Jerome Kitzke

Performed by:
alejandro t. acierto
Gelsey Bell
Isabel Castellvi
Andrew Livingston
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
Dennis Sullivan

Projections by
Dave Ruder

NATURAL STUDIES

8/15/2024

thingNY returns to the Brick with a double bill made up of Joseph White's You Against Nature and their latest collectively written opus, Mouthful, as part of the eclectic Exponential Festival.

You Against Nature is a new opera from the genre-fluid librettist and composer Joseph White who the Times calls “magical… mulchy… ribald… outlandish…” You Against Nature is based on the French decadent classic Against Nature, and situates a self-isolating aesthetic explorer in the present day. Expect forty minutes of homilies on modern-day alone time, attempts at life-hacking, and nihilistic indulgence taken to extraordinary lengths, performed by five singing, storytelling instrumentalists.

Mouthful is the latest collaboratively composed experimental opera from thingNY. Situated in the orbit of a large communal table, the ensemble explores digestion and excretion: of food, of blood, of ancestry and linguistic transmission. Each performance is different. With switching roles, in-ear monitors and instruments, the performers act as transmitters of each other’s songs, languages and choreography: reckoning with various degrees of appropriateness and appropriation, comprehension and (mis)translation.

In conjunction with these performances, thingNY simultaneously presents a new multimedia gallery show at the Brick Aux:
Aug. 15-31: TO TONGUE-TIE

MASK POLICY:
Part of what lets us present work to an audience at the current moment is to have a fully masked audience. If you don't have a mask, a KN95 will be provided for you.
Most of us have had our various long term health struggles, and for some of us that includes having bodies that make us particularly vulnerable to Covid and other airborne diseases. We can’t do this alone: the performing part and the keeping ourselves safe part. We need your participation in both.
These pieces are about trying to live in isolation and about trying to situate yourself within a community that stretches over time [and might come together around a table]. Being able to perform these pieces in a room with all of you is something we do not take for granted - in fact we’ve made some recent work for people to experience on their own, and so we were excited to build Mouthful to be experienced collectively.
Thank you for joining us this evening. This performance couldn’t happen without you.

THU AUG 15 @ 8pm
FRI AUG 16 @ 8pm
SAT AUG 17 @ 3pm
SAT AUG 17 @ 8pm

The Brick
579 Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn NY

TICKETS

You Against Nature
[world premiere]
by Joseph White

Performed by:
Paul Pinto
Gelsey Bell
Dave Ruder
Andrew Livingston
Erin Rogers

Mouthful
[world premiere]
Written and performed by:
alejandro t. acierto
Isabel Castellvi
Dave Ruder
Paul Pinto
Andrew Livingston
Gelsey Bell

In conjunction with:
To tongue-tie
A multimedia gallery show
@ Brick Aux
Aug 15-31

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