Sound is our first sense. Before birth we encounter the world through vibration, developing an embodied understanding of relation long before language. Vibrations of sound move through air, water, skin, and bone, crossing boundaries with ease. Sound is both immaterial and deeply physical: an event continually unfolding between bodies and environments.

At EMPAC, Untitling transforms the listening space into a site for reflection on how sound exceeds systems of categorization. Through careful attention to resonance, vibration, and environmental detail, the installation proposes listening as a practice of reciprocity—one that foregrounds our entanglement with the living world and opens possibilities for experiencing place as dynamic, interconnected, and continually becoming.

Developed through recordings gathered in exchange with forests, waterways, grasslands, deserts, and urban environments, the composition dissolves distinctions between environmental sound and synthesis. Electronic frequencies emerge not as simulations of nature but as another living presence within a shared ecology of vibration. Rather than documenting place, the work proposes listening itself as a form of placemaking.

Composed of field recordings and voice altered through playback, as well as synthesis, Untitling invites audiences into an evolving sonic environment where sound becomes a way of sensing ecological interdependence, memory, and place beyond the limits of language. Fragments of place emerge, dissolve, and return, inviting listeners to inhabit duration rather than resolution.

In these shifting resonances, Untitling imagines sound and acoustic ecology not as representation, but as an active participant in shaping right relations between bodies, technologies, and the living world.

As you listen, imagine each being inhabiting its most abounding state. Consider what becomes possible when listening is understood not as observation, but as reciprocity. Consider how sound and listening become a means of tending, remembrance, and return.

Paul Abbott and Edward George develop music for The Strangeness of Drumming—a duo concert of improvised music that stretches from Abbott's experimental practice (notably his 2026 album Slip) into hip-hop, R&B, and the rhythmic philosophies of D'Angelo, J Dilla, and Sly Dunbar.

Artist and filmmaker Edward George is in residence, researching and writing material for an episode of his podcast The Strangeness of Jazz, which delves into drums, drumming, and the generative possibilities of the musical “mistake.” The podcast covers historical and theoretical context of the subject, drawing from a wide selection of musical examples played in their entirety.

In EMPAC Studio 1–Goodman, renowned violinist and violist Marco Fusi continues his work from a previous residency, recording viola excerpts and pieces by composers Timothy McCormack, Pierluigi Billone, and others, to be published in a volume of contemporary viola and viola d'amore playing from Bärenreiter Verlag.

EMPAC-commissioned project Lazyhorse—The Living Earth Show, Raven Chacon, Mali Obomsawin, Miriam Elhajli, and Steve Hammond—records material for an upcoming record release.

Lead artist Miho Hatori develops Paris Syndrome, an EMPAC commission and multimedia performance installation that reimagines a rare psychological condition as a story from the near future, drawing audiences into a subtly changing state of perception.

On Saturday, September 5, TOPOS 2026 festival activities begin with a free Community BBQ, catered by Brooks’ BBQ (Oneonta, NY) and open to the public, with Sound House Records of Troy selling and spinning music—a chance for artists and audiences to meet, eat, and keep the conversation going. Vegetarian options will be available.

As a companion to his TOPOS presentation The Strangeness of Jazz, Edward George, on turntables, joins UK-based drummer, composer, and writer Paul Abbott for The Strangeness of Drumming, an improvised duo performance to expand upon Abbott’s 2025 experimental album, Slip.

At the center of Slip is Abbott’s long-developing acoustic-digital hybrid drum system, which combines live percussion with synthetic and processed sound in a relationship that is both intimate and unstable. Integrating Abbott’s research into rhythm and his own engagement with the music of D’Angelo, George stretches the continuum of inquiry around drumming across jazz, improvised music, hip-hop, and R&B.

Through turntables, voice, drums, electronics, samples, and sonic fragments, George and Abbott explore overlapping temporalities, rhythms, and ways of feeling groove. Mining archives, not to preserve them, but to recombine and recontextualize them, the duo points toward new sonic futurities. What happens when rhythm becomes a method of historical inquiry? What new forms of listening emerge when groove is treated as both memory and speculation?

The result is a dense and exhilarating dialogue in which intellectual rigor is continually reshaped through improvisation, pressure, repetition, and the liberatory possibilities of sound and rhythm.

Join us after the performance for a reception in Evelyn's café.

Founded on principles of collectivity, experimentation, and deep interdisciplinary collaboration, Improv Spaces fosters community through risk-taking performance and creative exchange. The organization is a vital platform for musicians across New York’s Capital and Saratoga regions, supporting improvisation as both an artistic practice and a social form. 

For TOPOS 2026, Improv Spaces presents two ensembles working at the intersection of experimental music, jazz, and exploratory sound practice: Rock City Falls Trio and Sun Dogs.

Rock City Falls Trio is Alex Chang (harp), Jason Handron (bass), and Adam Forman (drums). The trio integrates jazz language, classical technique, experimental sound practices, and indie-influenced atmospheres into a hybrid musical voice. Moving between composed structures and open improvisation, they emphasize collaborative listening, textural exploration, and cross-genre expression.

Sun Dogs, the sci-fi jazz duo of Dominique Vuvan (accordion, electronics) and Adam Tinkle (woodwinds, electronics), approaches improvisation through speculative and immersive sonic worlds. Vuvan is a psychologist whose research focuses on the neuroscience of music. Tinkle is a multi-instrumentalist and multimedia artist. Together in Sun Dogs, they explore the outer reaches of music. Their debut album, The Solstice Concert, is a semi-improvisational suite of soundscapes, harmonic territories, and synthesizer textures, where hypnotic moon bells, fractured field recordings, and shifting tonal environments open spaces for both play and deep listening.

Their back-to-back sets ask us: How can improvisation create new ways of listening, relating, and imagining together?