EXPANDING SPACES Mini-Festival to Present Ursel Schlicht and Hans Tammen

The Expanding Spaces Mini-Festival will take place Thursday, October 1 at 6 p.m. at MIS-EN_PLACE in Harlem. The evening will feature performances by Ursel Schlicht, Hans Tammen, Ximena Bedoya, Shahzad Ismaily, Carol Liebowitz, Nick Lyons, Adam Lane and Vijay Anderson.

The festival begins promptly at 6 p.m. with Ximena Bedoya, Hans Tammen and Shahzad Ismaily. Their music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear.

At 6:45 p.m., pianist Carol Liebowitz and alto saxophonist Nick Lyons will perform. The duo's music possesses a natural and beautiful sound and incorporates wide ranges of repertoire, texture, dynamics, mood, rhythm and form.

At 7:45 p.m., Ursel Schlicht and Hans Tammen will augment images from Tanja Kurzenknabe's photo series featuring Haitian collective Atis Rezistans, as well as work by Indonesian artist Agus PMTOH. The pair will accompany the images using electronically processed sounds from the piano in real time.

The evening concludes at 8:30 p.m. with Ursel Schlicht, Adam Lane and Vijay Anderson, who formed their new trio in 2026. Their music encompasses a wide range, moving from nuanced pianissimo passages to strong, powerful improvised soundscapes.

Schlicht and Tammen have collaborated on various projects since the late 1980s. They began Expanding Spaces by responding live to photographs from documenta fifteen by Tanja Kurzenknabe, creating sounds on piano with live sound processing. Documenta, a major international contemporary art exhibition, takes place for 100 days every five years. Its 2022 edition particularly highlighted collectives from the Global South, with the city of Kassel becoming a hub for several thousand participating artists.