Auricle New Music Series welcomes the Matt Blair Trio opening for Emily Beisel on Tuesday, May 12, 2026 at 7:00pm.
Emily Rach Beisel's spring tour features music from the upcoming solo record, Sumptuous Branching, to be released in April 2026. The performance blends bass clarinet, voice, and analog electronics, moving between composed material and open forms. It balances song-based structures with dense, heavy textures drawn from doom metal and experimental sound worlds. Acoustic and processed sounds are layered in real time, creating an immersive listening environment that shifts between intensity and quiet, meditative moments.
Matt Blair Trio & Emily Beisel
Matt Blair is a pianist, composer, and educator who recently returned to Madison, WI. His work draws upon diverse musical traditions such as contemporary classical, electro-acoustic improvisation, free jazz, minimalism, and noise. In addition to his practice as a pianist, he incorporates extended electronic processing of the Fender Rhodes, synthesizers, and the computer in his music.
Since 2018, Matt has been releasing music on his label, Scribbled Fang Records. Recent releases have included Shadow Sets, a collection of compositions for solo piano that was produced by Dave King (The Bad Plus, Happy Apple), Post Rock Lately, the debut record of Collector, an improvising trio featuring Jakob Heinemann on bass and Devin Drobka on drums and electronics, and Flights and Poor Health Good Spirits, both releases by Big Thanks, a Minneapolis-based Trash House trio featuring Miles Allen on saxophone and clarinet and Jack Lussenden on drums. Other recent releases have included After... Read More
Emily Rach Beisel is a Chicago-based improviser, composer, educator, curator, and woodwind specialist whose work is celebrated for its visceral intensity and innovative blend of techniques. Beisel’s 2023 solo album, Particle of Organs, has been described as “heavy stuff, sounds retrieved from the deeper places - the underworlds, the lightless subterranea... a raw, abrasive, oppressive, and thrilling journey (A Jazz Noise).” Beisel's music centers on the bass clarinet and incorporates voice, electronics, extended techniques, and other wind instruments creating a complex and nuanced soundscape in which the origins of sounds are often obscured.
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