Mandible Trio, Pushovers & Melinda Rice: Centers

Mandible Trio:

Mandible Trio is a new ensemble featuring violist and composer Jessica Pavone, guitarist and instrument builder Webb Crawford, and double bassist Nick Joz. Rooted in a shared language of creative improvisation, the trio explores the space between composition and spontaneous invention, creating music in which written structures become flexible frameworks for collective discovery.

Drawing on the distinct voices of viola, guitar, and double bass, Mandible Trio creates richly textured music that balances intricate melodic and harmonic writing with open-ended improvisation. Pavone's compositions invite the ensemble to shape form in real time through attentive listening and collaboration, pairing carefully crafted material with spaces for collective decision-making.

Blending influences from contemporary composition, jazz, and experimental music, Mandible Trio approaches music-making as a living process—one in which structure and freedom coexist, and individual voices emerge through deep musical conversation. The result is immersive, intimate, and continually unfolding.

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Queens, NY–based violist and composer Jessica Pavone has dedicated her practice to expanding the expressive range of the viola, “making a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log). Her work explores the intersections of composition, improvisation, and experimental music, creating a distinctive language rooted in texture, structure, and collaboration.

Pavone’s music has been presented at NYC venues including Abrons Arts Center, Bryant Park, ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, the Noguchi Museum, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and Socrates Sculpture Park, and at international festivals such as the Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), Jazz Festival Saalfelden (Austria), and Klangbad (Germany). She has released albums with Tzadik, Thirsty Ear, Out of Your Head, Relative Pitch Records, and Astral Spirits, and The New York Times described her music as “distinct and beguiling; its core is steely, and its execution clear.”

She has received grants and commissions from organizations including Chamber Music America, NYSCA, the NYFA NYC Women’s Fund, MATA Festival, New Music USA, the Jerome Foundation, and Queens Arts Fund. Pavone was awarded the Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition (2024) and rising-star violinist in the 2025 DownBeat Critics Poll. Her work has been supported by residencies at Loghaven, Ragdale, Ucross, Hambidge, I-Park, Stove Works, and Soaring Gardens.

Webb Crawford is a guitarist, banjoist, and instrument builder whose work explores the relationship between free and structured improvisation. As a builder, their focus is on modern reinterpretations of historical stringed instruments.

In 2017, Crawford worked with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) to restore the instruments of Gunnar Schönbeck as part of a playable, interactive exhibition. They also built replicas of Schönbeck's "triangular cellos" for Bennington College and have led instrument-building workshops at The Cooper Union, Connecticut College, and the Bennington Museum. In addition to building instruments, Crawford works as a repair technician and restorer with a particular interest in twentieth-century banjo-family instruments.

Crawford performs regularly with Michael Foster, Joey Sullivan, Zosha Warpeha, Sean Ali, Jack Langdon, Stella Silbert, and Chuck Roth, and is a member of projects including Field Recordings (with Sean Ali, Flin van Hemmen, Carlo Costa, and Eivind Opsvik), Michael Foster & Strings, Jessica Pavone's Mandible Trio, and Jersey Star.

Nick Joz is a multidisciplinary musician based in New York City. A sought-after collaborator among many of the avant-garde jazz scene's leading artists—including Peter Evans, Dan Weiss, Joel Ross, Francisco Mela, and Christian Lillinger—Joz's solo work explores electroacoustic music, centered on his primary instrument, the double bass. His practice draws on improvisation, collage, beat-making, vinyl manipulation, and analog synthesizer performance. His most recent release, Hieroglyph & Stuttering, is a full-length album of musique concrète featuring an improvising chamber ensemble with modular electronics. Released by Endectomorph Music in October 2025, the album reflects his expansive approach to composition and sound.

Pushovers:

Jordan Topiel Paul - amplified snare drum

Bryan Eubanks - serge modular synthesizer

Somewhere between an ill-advised 3AM sandwich at the Kofte place where small-time mobsters talk shop and a grumpy trudge through snowy Moabit, struggling to open the studio doors, Pushovers was born.

Melinda Rice: Centers

Centers is Melinda Rice's project for 5-string looping violin and guest based on processing information on hyperscale data centers in the US. The performance relies on musical traditions of improvisation, minimalist music, and protest music to translate the numbers of dates centers operating, being built, planned, and in the process of being planned into loops of sound. Like much of Melinda's work, this is music that fosters space for considering and reckoning with what is. It's full title is: Centers (data) what it is.

venue is wheelchair accessible