WildLine “Still Here | Three” @ Our Saviours Atonement Lutheran Church, NYC
FOR THE SEPT 17TH CONCERT: UPPER MANHATTAN – TICKETING HERE! FREE ADMISSION
FOR THE SEPT 18TH CONCERT: LOWER MANHATTAN (SAME PROGRAM) – TICKETING HERE! FREE ADMISSION
Flute, cello, piano music grooves in an immersive environment, filled with handmade wild creatures for audience interaction and play.
In this third installment of the Still Here concert series, WildLine celebrates all kinds of ungovernable bodies – of all species – and the ways in which we are “still here”. Our installation artist Yiseul LeMieux is creating an immersive environment filled with handmade wild creatures for audience interaction and play, in collaboration with WildLine’s flute, cello and piano trio (Tessa Brinckman, Chris Gross and David Friend).
We are featuring Andy Akiho’s Portal, Gemma Peacocke’s Taut and Malignant (from Seven Sermons to the Dead, in a new version written for WildLine), Pauline Oliveros’ Elemental Gallop, Marcos Balter ‘s delete/control/option, Seth Boustead’s Marginal Capacity, Ashkan Behzadi’s Fling, and Clarice Assad’s Flight of the Fairies.
Many thanks to The Puffin Foundation, the Music Performance Trust Fund, and Materials for the Arts for their support of this project.
WildLine is a new project-based chamber music ensemble based in the wilds of northern Manhattan that imagines, nurtures and performs all kinds of sound worlds, ancestries and futures. Initiated by flutist Tessa Brinckman in 2026, WildLine plays with inspired instrumentation, geo-poetic questions, multidisciplinary collaborations and commissions and has launched their first concert series season, Still Here | One, Two and Three in NYC.
Multidisciplinary artist/musician Yiseul LeMieux is a Korean born arts practitioner, based in New York City. Her practice spans performance, sound, installation, and moving image, creating immersive environments and participatory structures that invite audiences to actively shape the experience of the work. She explores how sensory engagement and collective interaction can shift perceptions of identity, agency, and community, challenging conventional boundaries between artist and audience and examining fluid relationships between humans, animals, objects, and other entities. She continues to develop adaptable works that integrate narrative, physical materials, and audience participation across diverse spaces and communities. She holds a Master’s degree in Piano Performance from Louisiana State University and a Master’s degree in Music from The New School’s Performer Composer program.
Interdisciplinary flutist/composer and Director of WildLine, Tessa Brinckman has been praised for her “chameleon-like gifts” and “virtuoso elegance” (Gramophone), and as “an adroit creator of sound worlds” (Fanfare). Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand, she has premiered hundreds of new works (commissioning over forty), with prominent classical music creators across the globe. In New York since 2022, she builds work that honors synesthesia, dialect, innate meter and collaboration. Tessa is co-director of the bi-coastal duo, Caballito Negro, with percussionist Terry Longshore, commissioning ground-breaking flute and percussion works, including composers Juri Seo and Baljinder Sekhon. She directs WildLine, a new, interdisciplinary chamber group based in northern Manhattan. Her collaborative videos have won 22 film festival awards for music scoring, animation and experimental film. Numerous recent projects include her critically acclaimed album Take Wing, Roll Back (New Focus Recordings), AEON (Rattle Records, New Zealand), solo, chamber and orchestral commissions from flutists Lisa Bost, Lisa Cella and Unbound Symphony (Seattle), performances at Baltimore’s Livewire Festival, Princeton Sound Kitchen, and headlining with Mexico’s Duo Duplum at Festival Cervantino and New Music Forum (Mexico City).
Cellist Christopher Gross’ performances have been praised by The New York Times (“beautifully meshed readings….lustrous tone”) and The Strad Magazine (“…the tone of Gross’ cello enveloped the crowd [as he] showed energy and intonational accuracy, even when racing around the fingerboard”). He is a founding member of the Talea Ensemble, a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players, appearing at venues like Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Disney Hall, Darmstadt Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival, Wien Modern, and the Composers Conference. As a soloist and ensemble member his numerous premieres include Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Charles Wuorinen, Georg Friedrich Haas, Brian Ferneyhough, Olga Neuwirth, James Dillon, and Augusta Read Thomas, and has played with the New York Philharmonic and the Riverside Symphony.
Pianist David Friend is described as “[one] of the finest, busiest pianists active in New York’s contemporary-classical scene.” (NY Times). Performing regularly at major venues like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall (London), and National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing), as well as alternative venues including (Le) Poisson Rouge, Issue Project Room, REDCAT, and Constellation, he has appeared in major festivals including Mostly Mozart, Aspen, the Whitney and Venice Biennials, Prague Spring, TIME:SPANS, Rewire (the Hague), CTM (Berlin), and Ultima (Oslo). He has recorded for numerous labels, and his playing has been heard on NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR’s Hammered!, and WNYC’s New Sounds. He performed on Third Coast Percussion’s Steve Reich album, which won the Grammy Award for best chamber music performance.
