WSH|SANTA CRUZ|2026
Artists & DJs:
Ava Koohbor is a maker, sound performer, and writer whose practice moves across forms and expectations. Letting material, vibration, and language inform one another, she creates works that question norms and take shape as performances, installations, exhibitions, and books. Her latest book, Of Flesh and Frequency: A Poetics of Sound Making, published by Lithic Press in 2026
Lauren Sarah Hayes is a Scottish improviser, sound artist, and scholar who is recognised for her embodied approach to computer music. Her music is a mix of experimental pop/live electronics/techno/noise/free improvisation and has been described as ‘voracious’ and ‘exhilarating’. As a live sound sculptor, she manipulates, remixes, and bends voice, drum machines, analogue synths and self-built software. She has toured extensively across Europe and North America, including as part of her tenure with the New BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Her work has been released on Superpang, Hard Return, Pan Y Rosas Discos, LOL Editions, Werra Foxma, Sunwarped, and Harmonic Ooze Records.
Amy Reed is a painter and composer working in performance, free improvisation and sound. They live in Northern California, Hill Nisenan Territory in the American River Canyon. They continue to re-invente the possibilities of the electric guitar and song writing though improvisation and collaboration. They recently joined Susie Ibarra’s field ensemble in North Sikkim, India. In 2023 released Cedar Smoke; Biggi Vinkeloe (Saxophone, Flute) and Peeter Uuskyla (Percussion) on Strange Woman Records. This year, they celebrate a new solo release Bwibwika (sing) along with a book of scores and paintings published by Ibarra’s label, Habitat Sound (Berlin).
Zachary James Watkins (he/him) is a mixed-race African American Oakland-based composer, musician, engineer and educator. Born in Lubbock, Texas and based in Oakland for the past 20 years, he originally moved here to attend Mills College where he earned an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. He currently performs solo as well as with various formations (Watkins / Peacock, Foreign / Domestic). Early ensembles include the Pink Canoes (2004–2008), featuring Ava Mendoza, Travis Johns, Noah Philips and Aram Shelton, as well as his duo Black Spirituals with drummer Marshall Trammell. He has composed multiple compositions for the Kronos Quartet and is currently writing new works for other respected Bay Area ensembles. During his 2015 Headlands Center for the Arts residency, he explored the surrounding bunker acoustics and created works around observed resident frequencies. The Bay inspires and challenges. The art and specifically the music communities are rich and deep!
Brendan Glasson (b. Providence, RI) is a musician living and working in Oakland, CA. He is interested in detail, texture, and slowness as launching points for an augmented experience of duration and listening.
His album "h i g h l a n d" (2026, Wow! signal) evokes new landscapes of synthetic textures and melodic contours. His collection of work, "'The Reality of People' and Other Works for Reed Organ" (2023, Debacle Records) activates resonances in the organ, creating a pulsing music of limited gesture.
Brendan has an MFA from Mills College, where he worked for several years as Technical Director for the Center for Contemporary Music. He is currently a Montalvo Lucas Arts Music and Composition fellow.
Marielle V Jakobsons creates immersive compositions for synthesizers and expressive strings — minimal in structure, deeply felt in presence. Accompanied by David Wesley Golightly on keys, she will be performing selections from her latest album The Patterns Lost to Air, out on Thrill Jockey Records, which has been called “one of the finest examples of contemporary ambient music in 2026.”
Voicehandler plays intuitive, incantatory music grounded in the most primitive and somatic instruments -- the voice and percussion -- juxtaposed with contemporary, disembodied electronics. The performance is loose and exploratory, at various times energetic and meditative. Rivero’s voice embraces noise, with the lines blurred between electronic processing and extended vocal techniques. Heule has a special interest in friction techniques, and embraces limited instrumentation - like a single drum and a single cymbal - as a commitment to exploring the depth of his instruments.
Sprinkler - Exposed to Chinese folk and new music at an early age, jasmine somehow re-approached sounds as an interdisciplinary artist. After have moving to the bay area, the experimental music scene reignites her passion to sounds, notwithstanding she realized how closely the process of sounds making is so close to looking at ones own mind. Fused with a western singing method, bel-canto and eastern folk singing method, with a synthesizer, jasmine reappears as SPRINKLER to send us along series of inquiry to the invisible, the unspeakable speakeasy, in terms of weaving electrics sounds and her pure vocal, just like, walking the night alone and spotted the sprinkler that sprays the lawn sparkingly in the dark side.
CHARI is an NY Emmy–nominated composer, interdisciplinary artist, and humanities scholar. Through sound, performance, and digital media, they explore alternative archival practices, memory, and technology from a Black diasporic perspective. Their immersive works transform archives into living, participatory experiences that challenge conventional histories and systems of preservation.
Connor Tomaka is a composer and researcher based in San Francisco. He works primarily with software instrumentation exploring physical modelling, fidelity, and repetition through electroacoustic composition, performance, and installation. He has recently presented work at venues including Critical Media Lab – HGK (Basel), Stooj (Berlin), Cafe OTO (London), Emily Harvey Foundation (NYC), DOG (SF), and Pech (Vienna).
Shanna Sordahl (they/them) is a sound artist, composer, and performer based in Oakland CA. Using electronics, amplified cello, and installation art as primary mediums, their work is a continual exploration of one's relationship to both sound and physical spaces. Often centering timbral and textural development, they use sound to create environments that illustrate transformational possibilities and processes of change, inviting one to question ingrained patterns of perception. Shanna’s compositional practice and research integrate inquiries around neurodivergent embodiment, community building, and social justice practices. www.shannasordahl.net
ThisNeverHappened is a newly formed ensemble and performance collective from Santa Cruz and the Bay Area focused on the performance of open and indeterminate works. Rodrigo Barriga, Robert Lopez, Marc Perez, C. Pierandozzi Everingham, and Shanna Sordahl
Claude Monet is the newest experimental moniker of Los Angeles-based musician Albee Peacock. Their work as Claude Monet features sonic images of decay and a dizzying use of musique concréte techniques to convey the anxiety and urgency found within us. Peacock is best known for his current work in the post-rock outfit punxsutawney, as well as the now-defunct audio visual project Volvo240DL alongside artist Grace Cofrancesco.
DJ July 58th ~~ Livia Charman (b. 1993 Oakland, CA) is a musician and visual artist based in Santa Cruz, CA. She enjoys sunfaded plastic. Livia does graphic design for the party series Tide Swing and co-manages Jetty Radio, where she hosts the show Every Day is a Lifetime.
Matt & NFS are DJs, artists, musicians, curators, and culture workers known for showcasing their broad tastes through Cone Shape Top, an Oakland-based label, shop and platform founded in 2017.
Matt has been spinning eclectic sets for over 25 years. Never beholden to genre, they relish finding relationships between varied and often disparate sounds to create shifting and unexpected moods. They currently share sounds through The Blurred Crusade, a monthly show on SutroFM.
NFS (Not For Sale) is an Oakland raised and based DJ that has spent over a decade exploring and weaving esoteric tempos and textures into immersive, off kilter and resonant sets.
Together they seek to co create unique listening experiences and and work with numerous local artists and collectives. They also run the recurring party EGG! at Stork Club and share monthly shop picks on their show Cone Zone on Lower Grand Radio.
leshy is an interdisciplinary sound artist, dj, educator, etc. building unruly playable systems and exploring precarities in perception, memory, and time.