Bernardo Cruz gives the European premier of Splittings, for solo vibraphone and electronics, in a solo concert in Wuppertal, DE at the HFMT, Koln on October 10th.
St John's College, OxfordOxford, England
Thursday, November 19 • 7:30 PM - 9 PM
Overview
Composer/performer Kari Watson gives the UK premiere of Fuse, a work for analog modular synthesizers and programmed drum machines.
EXMO is proud to welcome Kari Watson to St John's College!
Kari will perform the UK premiere of their solo work Fuse. Fuse combines modular synthesizers, a quadraphonic speaker array, and unhoused speaker cones distributed throughout the room to create a live spatial audio sound sculpture. Custom wearables including an XLR snake tie Watson’s body into the setup. Modular instruments sit atop custom ceramic tables made with visual artist and ceramicist Paige Schlosser, designed so cables can be woven in and around the surfaces. Watson takes theorist Donna Haraway’s cyborg as an origin point for the project: a figure of synthesis and hybridity, where humans and machines are enmeshed and the boundaries between body and environment are continually unsettled. Fuse makes that unsettled boundary audible, asking where the performer ends and the surrounding system begins.
To open the night, Kari and Zack Di Lello will perform a short set of freely improvised music that explores the possibilities of merging voice and electronics.
Kari (they/them) is a composer, performer, and intermedia artist whose work explores the intersections of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic composition, live performance, and interactive installation. Their composition practice is cross-disciplinary and deeply collaborative, often involving workshop-driven processes that prioritize collective exploration and exchange. As a performer playing analog synthesizers, they engage a customizable spatialization software built in MaxMSP with spatial speaker arrays to further explore issues of tactility and drama in immersive sonic environments.
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Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm. This event takes place in the Garden Quad Auditorium at St John's College, Oxford. Enter at the Porter's Lodge and follow the signs through the college.
Experimental Music Oxford is a series supported by St John's College at the University of Oxford. All events are free and open to the public.
https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/a-grammar-of-distance/
Rosie Middleton mezzo-soprano
Kari Watson electronics
Kari Watson (USA, 1998)
A Grammar of Distance (2025-2026) 38’ World Premiere
Created in close collaboration with Rosie Middleton
An exploration of relationality, A Grammar of Distance oscillates between fragments of interior and exterior worlds, asking how we come to understand and negotiate intimacy, vulnerability, and inter/personal distance. A mosaic of moments accumulate, converging towards a single vanishing point to articulate the complexity of the relational self.
A Grammar of Distance is driven by shared experiences related to identity, embodiment, and the politics of performance on marginalised bodies. It explores the potential for recontextualising the body via electronic intervention, questioning how this transforms power and agency within performance.
Kari Watson is a composer, performer and intermedia artist whose work explores the intersections of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic composition, live performance and interactive installation. Their composition practice is cross-disciplinary and deeply collaborative, often involving workshop-driven processes that prioritize collective exploration and exchange.
Winner of the 2020 Michiko Hirayama Prize for experimental vocal music and honourably mentioned in the 2023 Darmstadt Kranichstein Music Prize, mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton specialises in the performance and creation of experimental music, contemporary opera and performance art. As a collaborative artist, she creates work with composers and visual and movement artists, often using her body as a stimulus for artistic investigation.
Presented in the industrial surroundings of Bates Mill Blending Shed, this world premiere offers a compelling encounter with two artists creating a powerful new work at the intersection of voice, performance and electronic sound.
Produced by hcmf// supported by Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation and Vaughan Williams Foundation; also supported by University of Chicago Department of Music and Royal Northern College of Music
A Grammar of Distance is commissioned by hcmf// and was developed on residencies at Iklectik Art Lab and City University of London
12.40pm | Heather Roche
“Queen of Clarinet Multiphonics” (Sara Mohr-Pietsch, BBC Radio 3) Heather Roche performs the world premiere of a new work by Kari Watson; a composer, performer, and intermedia artist whose work explores the intersections of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic composition, live performance, and interactive installation.
Kari Watson and Katinka Kleijn play duo at the Sound and Gravity Festival in Chicago, IL on September 5th, 2026.
Program:
MinJoon Choi: Wet Print, Eraser Mark, Pillow Dent, for prepared harp solo (2025)
Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir: Oddball II , for solo harp (2026) WP
Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson: Sigtún, for harp, harmonica and tape (2026) WP
Kari Watson: For Maaria, for solo harp (2023)
Ed Cooper: Sub Eclipse blood work, for harp, voice and tape (2023)
https://www.danishnewmusicacademy.org/
August 4th, 19:30 at the Royal Academy of Music Chamber Music Hall Skovgaardsgade 2C - 8000 Aarhus C
Concert premier with IYCA of a new work for Ensemble intercontemporain at the IYCA in Ticino, CH.
Kari Watson and Katinka Kleijn play the 2026 MISE-EN Festival at MISE-EN Place in Brooklyn, NY
Improvised trio performance with Peter Maunu and Michael Zerang on Maunu’s Splice Series, held in the attic of Beat Kitchen.
deeply chamber choir is a new chamber ensemble spun off from deeply choir – a queer, collaborative, community choir that's been gathering Monday nights in Chicago for the past year and a half. Where deeply choir is a practice-oriented and exploratory community choir – deeply chamber choir emerged with a focus to prepare and share a collaboratively-curated program of music ~
deeply chamber choir is directed by Chris Wood and features Allison Shackelford, Audrey Steiner, Bran Moorhead, D Jean-Baptiste, Dora Hewitt, Eric Streichert, Kari Watson, Maela Mead, Paige Naylor, Steph Barnes, Zoelle Nagib
For MYSTERIUM, we're performing music that spans centuries – from a Georgian Orthodox chant to Purcell to SOPHIE and Radiohead – each sharing a kindred devotion and the underlying darkness that accompanies it. Preparing and singing all of this music has been incredibly emotional and rewarding for us, come through and feel what we've been on ~
Ts'mindao Ghmerto – trad. Georgian Orthodox chant
O Magnum Mysterium – Tomás Luis de Victoria (ed. John Rutter), 1572
Hear My Prayer – Henry Purcell, c. 1682
Invocation – The Carpenters (arr. C. Wood), 1977
Pyramid Song – Radiohead (arr. G. Lawson), 2001
Is It Cold in the Water? – SOPHIE (arr. C. Wood), 2018
Opening for Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl and Macie Stewert for their record release of BODY SOUND. doors 8pm show at 830.
Classical Chamber series at The Block
7:30 PM 9:00 PM
The Block
Experience the variety of sound that a string quartet can make! Varo String Quartet will perform a mix of music, from the innovative works of living composers to classical masterpieces at Muskegon’s The Block.
Kari Watson premieres Fuse, a new solo performance for analog modular synthesizers and programmed drum machines. The piece plays with clock function and tempo ramps, moving between analog and digital environments as Watson shapes the sound in real time.
Fuse engages a quadraphonic speaker array in tandem with a spatial audio sculpture of unhoused speaker cones distributed through the room. A custom synth garment—made in collaboration with visual artist and designer Av Grannan—houses patch cables and an XLR snake that tie Watson’s body into the setup. Modular instruments sit atop custom ceramic tables made with visual artist and ceramicist Paige Schlosser, designed so cables can be woven in and around the surfaces.
Watson takes theorist Donna Haraway’s cyborg as an origin point for the project: a figure of synthesis and hybridity, where humans and machines are enmeshed and the boundaries between body and environment are continually unsettled. Fuse makes that unsettled boundary audible, asking where the performer ends and the surrounding system begins.
for more information: https://lampo.org/archive/kari-watson-2026/
Three Places for String Quartet is performed by Quatuor Mémoire at the Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur in Montreal, Québec.
Heather Roche premiers a new work for Bass Clarinet on the Critical Sounds Festival & Conference at the Greenline Center for the Arts in Hyde Park.
Contemporary chamber ensembles Quince and Varo String Quartet share a bill for an afternoon of colorful and virtuosic music.
**VARO String Quartet:**
Another Living Soul by Nicole Lizée
Three Places for String Quartet by Kari Watson
gardensongs by Paul Novak
**QUINCE ENSEMBLE:**
Night Wears Black by Juhi Bansal
The Smallest Gap by Carrie Henneman Shaw
Evening Morning Day by David Lang
Presented by The CheckOut.
This is an 21+ event
University of Chicago Tea Time Concert - Fulton Recital Hall
4:00 PM-5:00 PM
Fulton Hall
Western Michigan University - Bullock Series recital
7:30 PM 8:30 PM
Dalton Center Recital Hall (map)
The Performing Media Festival presents a performance of TETHER by Kari Watson, Luana Borges, and Kristen Bernier on March 14 in the festivals final concert.
Kari Watson and Sam Wenc play duo at the Kiosk gallery on March 7th in the afternoon.
Jen Torrence gives the US Premier of For Jen Torrence on the opening night of Chicago’s Frequency Festival.
OSCILLATIONS for large ensemble, modular synthesizer, and electronics, presented through the Mannes School of Music and the New School by the Mannes American Composers Ensemble with Conductor David Fulmer, with Watson on synthesizer.
A public in progress sharing of the Watson and Middleton’s new collaboration, The Masks We Wear.
a week long residency at Iklectik Art Lab’s new space, culminating in a concert on January 30th.
Kari and Katinka play Studio DB in celebration of their record VISTAS.
Kari Watson and Ethan Braun play duo at RICHTEN25 in Berlin, DE.
Kari Watson & Katinka Kleijn play at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury as part of Watson & Kleijn UK/EU tour.
Kari and Katinka duo splitting a bill at Khimaira w/ Maya Bennardo, Etienne Nillesen and Kristofer Svensson.
Duo show with cellist Laurence Gaudreau at Parlour, Amsterdam.
Kari plays a duo with accordionist Tizia Zimmerman gig at WIM, Werkstatt für improvisierte Musik Zürich, at 8pm.
MINU_festival_for_expanded_music is a Copenhagen-based festival presenting art on the borders of experimental music and other media. It is a space for oscillating between extremes and charting relationships between art, technology, and contemporary culture. With a curatorial focus on the events as holistic experiences, MINU is an initiative for expanding the definition of music through presenting the unmusical as musical.
On November 7th at 730pm, the International Museum of Surgical Science will present RESONANT CHAMBERS, a night of audio visual performances by Kari Watson & Lou Mallozzi (Duo), Kelley Sheehan, and David Bird.
