MISE-EN_PLACE (45 Saint Nicholas Avenue, New York, NY 10026)

Program
Kari Watson (USA/USA): VISTAS: WARP, WEFT (2025)

Gaël Moriceau (Canada/Canada): Harmonic Turbulences (2024)

Antonello Tosto (Italy/Italy): Metamorphose II (2025)

Justine Leichtling (USA/USA): Female Loneliness (2025)

Liann Kang (USA/South Korea): L’amour pur (2024)

*The program is subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances. Please note that the listed order is not the concert order.

About the composers

Kari Watson and Katinka Kleijn (USA/USA)
Kari Watson and Katinka Kleijn bring together a wide range of sounds, merging acoustic, analog, and digital sound sources and often exploring extended aspects of improvisation such as physicality, attunement, and embodiment. Combining cello, modular eurorack synthesizer, Max MSP, and handheld electronics, the two create tactile performance environments for their audiences. Together, Watson & Kleijn have a deep commitment to live performance as a venue for possibility, vulnerability, and variability. The two embrace improvisation as grounds for continual exploration of connection, empathy and risk.

Gaël Moriceau (Canada/Canada)
Gaël Moriceau is a master’s student in music composition and sound creation at Université de Montréal (UdeM). A former mechanical engineer, he turned to music in 2019 and studied sound design and electroacoustic composition at UdeM, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in 2022. His work combines field recordings, synthesis, and spatialization to create immersive sonic environments. His current research focuses on developing playing techniques for Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) such as the T-Stick and composing electroacoustic works for small DMI ensembles, aiming to expand their repertoire and promote sustainable creative practices for future performers and composers.

Antonello Tosto (Italy/Italy)
Antonello Tosto is a composer and producer, based in Rome, Italy. His music carries a distinctly European flavor, infused with an old-world sense of craftsmanship and a subtle theatrical playfulness. He writes concert music for a wide range of ensembles as well as electronic compositions, performed internationally
He co-founded Pianello Studio (formerly Valse Naïve Studio) together with artist Mariapia Di Lecce. The studio produces short animated films and interactive musical installations.

Justine Leichtling (USA/USA)
Justine Leichtling is a composer, violinist, and psychologist living in Brooklyn. She writes unabashedly emotional music that combines acoustic instruments, voice, and electronics to evoke the raw sounds of our beautiful/ugly/tragic/joyous/hysterical human condition. Originally from San Francisco, Leichtling earned her BA in Computing and the Arts from Yale University, her PsyD in Psychology from the Wright Institute, and her MM in Composition from Mannes School of Music. In addition to composing and performing, she maintains a psychotherapy practice. In her free time, you can find her attending live shows, writing poetry, singing and dancing Flamenco, or running in Prospect Park.

Liann Kang (USA/South Korea)
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Liann J. Kang is a composer and vocalist who writes music that brings out imagery and sensory responses that can be stimulated uniquely through the time-based auditory experience of music, inspired by her experience of synesthesia. Kang is interested in the vulnerable, fragile, fleeting, and intangible qualities of “in between” feelings and emotions, manifesting from transitory phenomena such as nostalgia and foreignness. She pays close attention to the qualities of everyday sounds around us, especially their influence as familiar objects to shape listeners’ perception of space – its physical, acoustical, and imaginary aspects.”