New Ear Festival 2026

Night 01 :: Talullah Calderwood, Sue Huang, Konjur Collective (Bashi Rose, Jamal R. Moore, Daoure Diongue, Emperor King Bishop)

Friday, January 18, 2026
169 Bowery NYC
Doors: 7:30p | Show: 8:00p

The New Ear Festival is a bold exploration of avant-garde sound and contemporary art. The festival features a diverse lineup of artists pushing the boundaries of sonic innovation, embodying one of Fridman Gallery’s core missions—to help restore the creative, experimental spirit of downtown Manhattan.

Performers:

Talullah Calderwood (b. 2002, New York City) is a musician and sound artist based in Brooklyn. She earned a BA in electronic music from Bard College, focusing on sound sculpture and electronic vocal processing with Max MSP. Her work emphasizes the use of physical objects and electronics to explore the human voice, particularly through creating metal stringed instruments that act as unique extensions of it. Passionate about the intimate process of inventing, building, and composing on original instruments, Calderwood uses these tools to weave together different worlds of drone, experimental, and electronic music, shaping new sonic landscapes for herself and her audience. She has recently performed at Basilica Hudson, Stone Circle Theater, Purgatory, Clinton Methodist Church, and as a part of Maxi Glenn’s Varispeed concert series.

Sue Huang is a new media artist whose work examines collective experience, ecological intimacy, and speculative futures. She is the 2025–2026 Rutgers–New Brunswick Laureate for Bodies of Flora, a project exploring botanical loss and social memory. Huang has exhibited nationally and internationally at MOCA, Los Angeles; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Philadelphia Contemporary; ISEA, Montreal; and Ars Electronica, Linz, among others. Her residencies include Leonardo@Djerassi, LMCC, NEW INC, and the Studios at MASS MoCA. Huang holds an MFA in Media Arts from UCLA and a BS in Science, Technology, and International Affairs from Georgetown University. She is an assistant professor of Art & Design at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

Konjur Collective, founded in 2018 by Bashi Rose, engages in improvisation and ritual rooted in ancestral and radical forgeries of sound with intentions of evoking collective healing/release and feelings/visions of a revolutionary future.  Konjur embraces musical approaches from throughout the African Diaspora and the world, but our primary creative pulse comes from our collective experience in Baltimore, providing a rich, raw, love-filled, fearless musical grounding that we feel is absolutely needed during these days and times.  We also include radical experimental video and spoken-word in our ritual allowing those who experience us to have a visceral and cerebral processing of radical ideas and imagery. 

Bashi Rose, founder of Konjur Collective is a theatre artist, musician, and filmmaker. He was raised in West Baltimore and nurtured by the Baltimore Arts Community.  He uses the drum kit as an improvisational conduit for the spiritual/ancestral realm; and to share radical anti-imperialist-love-filled-healing vibrations.  Most of his work is community based in Bmore, but he has performed and has had work produced in numerous venues; including the High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music, Brooklyn Academy of Music, National Saw Dust, The Shrine, Baltimore Museum of Art, San Francisco Black Film Festival, Black Femme Supremacy Film Fest, and the Black Panther Party Film Festival, to name a few. In addition to releasing the cassette, Ritual of Rebellion (Courtesy of Ornette Coleman Fiend Club and the CD, Rhythm In Flux (Courtesy of Sensitive Documents), he has also had the honor to record with Archie Shepp and Lafayette Gilchrist.

Jamal R. Moore is a native of Baltimore Maryland who is a multi-instrumentalist, composer/performer, and educator. His background includes California Institute of The Arts (M.F.A. 2012), Berklee College of Music (B.M 2005), Eubie Blake Jazz Orchestra (2000) under the direction of Christopher Calloway Brooks, and historically acclaimed Frederick Douglass Sr. High where notable alumni Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Ennis graduated from. Some notable luminaries Jamal has worked and recorded with are Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Nicole Mitchell, Archie Shepp, David Ornette Cherry, Tomeka Reid, Dr. Bill Cole, DJ Lou Gorbea, George Duke, Sheila E, David Murray, JD Parran, Ras Moshe, Hprizm, (Antipop Consortium) Tatsua Nakatani, Hamid Drake and the late Yahyah Abdul Majid (Sun Ra Arkestra). He is an affiliate of The Pan African Peoples Arkestra of the late Horace Tapscott, Black Praxis of David Boykin, member of Konjur Collective, and co-creator of Ancestral Duo with Luke Stewart. Jamal currently leads his own groups, Akebulan Arkestra, Napata Strings, Black Elements Quartet, Organix Trio, and Mojuba Duo.

Daoure Diongue is a saxophonist, composer, and sound essayist. A polyglot and alchemist, he evokes his homes of Baltimore and Senegal through sound. His work draws on world-class conservatory training as a saxophonist and the self-determining ethos of African American Music. Each of his projects is a first-order experience that is both mysterious and whole. In I Peered to the Other Side, Daoure explores how understanding our grief can bring us new clarity, beauty, and possibility.

Emperor King Bishop “If I could sum up my musical experience in one word, that word would be “ascension.” I grew up playing saxophone in school, learning theory while also self teaching myself many other instruments and studio production and audio engineering. Music for me is bigger than the notes on the manuscript, or the songs played on the radio. Music is one of the most beautiful art practices that align with the fabric of the universe that we exist in. For that reason, I don’t consider myself a musician, but as a “Sonic Alchemist,” or “Sound Scientist.” Music is a spiritual practice for me, one where healing can happen in. My goal is to always provide an open space or portal of sorts to access parts of ourselves that may have been previously unknown, or parts that needed some attention. My practice of music is one of vulnerability, truth, and unconditional love.”