Nate Wooley's Mutual Aid Music // Larry Ochs Safe Havens (for the Abstract Truth)

An evening featuring sets by Nate Wooley’s Mutual Aid Music and Larry Ochs Safe Havens (for the Abstract Truth), each consisting of musicians committed to collective music-making, where listening and contributing to a spontaneous but reflective order matters.

Both groups come together around the ultimate goal of improvised music, which is to be as strong as its musicians’ collective concentration, listening, and immediate, magical responses. The spirit of improvisation has inspired and intrigued Ochs since the beginning and is echoed in Nate Wooley’s writings about about Mutual Aid Music: “It is a music in which each person is asked to perform within the mission of musical mutual aid: giving their sound to the group with the goal of building a musical statement – and language – that transcends the individual, strong personalities that make up the ensemble.”

Mutual Aid Music

Nate Wooley trumpet

Modney violin

Lester St. Louis cello

Matt Moran vibraphone

Russell Greenberg percussion

Safe Havens (for the Abstract Truth)

Larry Ochs tenor, sopranino saxophones

Charles Burnham violin

Trevor Dunn acoustic, electric bass and effects

Ikue Mori electronics

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.

USE CODE EARLYBIRDER AT CHECKOUT FOR $5 OFF TICKETS — ENDS AUGUST 31ST.

Nate Wooley is an improvisor, composer, and writer. As an instrumentalist, he has been a soloist with the New York Philharmonic as well as working with composers such as Annea Lockwood, Éliane Radigue, and Anthony Braxton. His solo trumpet improvisations have been hailed as “exquisitely hostile” and “the most progressive campfire music ever.” His compositions are evolving amalgams of improvisation, folk music, text, and immersive experiences that communicate an arc of human experience from the fragility of being alone to the ecstasy of collectivity.

Mutual Aid Music is a compositional ecosystem of small works for a flexible chamber ensemble of improvisers. Based on over 100 micro-compositions, the music is assembled in the moment according to the rules of the piece. Each player randomly chooses a page of music, which they then use as the primary material from which to improvise a part of the overall. One performer uses no material at all, and must improvise their part from scratch. The goal is to react to, reinforce, and highlight the contributions of the rest of the group using only the limited musical prompts given on the chosen micro-composition. The result is a chamber music that is amoebic, ever-changing and shifting in three-dimensions as each musician manipulates their material to best fit the group’s sound in the present. Mutual Aid Music is a prime example of my belief that profound musical complexity comes from the social act of performing music together; each performance—whether it is from a trio or a full chamber orchestra—is made solely from each musician’s education, aesthetic, and virtuosity interacting in real time with the same traits of their partners. In this communal way of making music, the most wonderful and surprising sounds can be produced

Larry Ochs makes music in the worlds of “avant-garde jazz” aka “improvised music,” composing music for bands like Rova Saxophone 4tet (with whom he has performed since 1978),  Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core, Ochs-Robinson Duo, The Fictive Five, and Kihnoua. All-improv bands have seen him partner and tour with Nels Cline, Gerald Cleaver, Mark Dresser, Vladimir Tarasov, Dave Rempis, Lisa Mezzacappa, Darren Johnston, Ben Davis, Miya Masaoka, Fred Frith, Joe Morris, Chris Brown, William Winant, Joan Jeanrenaud, and Peggy Lee, among others.

Safe Havens (for the Abstract Truth) Larry Ochs dreamed up this quartet for a show at The Stone in February 2025 with gabby fluke-mogul on violin. That same quartet recorded at Roulette in July 2025. While listening to the final mixes of recordings in Roulette’s basement studio, Ochs fell…