Singer-songwriters Claud and Elliott Skinner invite us into an intimate evening of music shaped by the city they call home. Together, they bring two singular approaches to songwriting and performance that reflect the expansiveness and creative energy of New York’s musical landscape.

June 17, 2026

-

Sonido Gallo Negro is a band from Mexico City going back to the roots of psychedelic tropical music with guitars, eccentric organs, analog synthesizers, theremin...they mix exotic rarity and esoterism, which will alter your perception and force you to dance until you get exhausted. Add to it visual hypnotics and live performance by Dr. Alderete.

June 18, 2026

-

Derya Yıldırım and Grup Şimşek are internationally recognized for their unique and infectious sound that combines Anatolian folk with psychedelia, pop and soul influences. Co-presented with World Music Institute

June 20, 2026

-

Inner Spaces is a duo project from trumpeter-composer Amir ElSaffar and sound artist Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch — two artists for whom microtone is mother tongue and silence is material. ElSaffar moves between trumpet, voice, and santur, drawing on the Iraqi maqam tradition alongside the language of contemporary jazz. Bianchi Hoesch surrounds and transforms this acoustic presence with live electronics, building immersive sonic environments in real time. Together they have developed a modular, collaborative form that weaves electroacoustic landscapes, maqam, microtonal harmony, and open improvisation into a continuous, breathing whole. Their album Inner Spaces (Maqam Records / Ornithology Productions) has received four-star praise from DownBeat, Songlines, and Jazz Journal, with reviewers describing a music that is at once "spiritually ancient" and rigorously forward-looking — a "sonic laboratory" and a "mercurial slice of ambient jazz" rooted in a shared Iraqi maqam. In concert, the duo extends the recorded work outward: the room becomes part of the instrument, and each performance finds its own shape through flexible structures and improvisatory space. This is music that does not move quickly. It asks to be inhabited — heard with the full body, not just the ears.

June 21, 2026

-

Join us on Monday, June 22nd for a FREE Community Happy Hour. Expect drink specials, lively conversation, and a tasting by Ten to One Rum! We're also proud to have Crystal Guardian joining us for this edition for a custom earplug pop-up. Come in get your earplugs fitted in 10 minutes and in just two weeks you'll have custom earplugs! RSVP for FREE today to reserve your spot.

June 22, 2026

-

Yasser Tejeda and Marcos J. López invite us into an evening of intimate music that will make us dance, blending sounds inspired by New York’s Latin community. This special night is part of the Young Masters series, a platform that honors artists who have achieved exceptional mastery early in their careers, celebrating them for redefining their fields and inspiring a new generation, in partnership with Parcha Projects, a NYC- and Puerto Rico–based discovery platform championing artists from the Caribbean.

June 26, 2026

-

Few artists exult in the joyous exhilaration and intrepid spirit of communal music-making with the fervor and vitality of visionary bandleader, trumpeter, composer and arranger Steven Bernstein. ResoNation Trio convenes a new chordless trio with master improvisers Scott Colley on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The album’s contemplative explorations feel like a departure from the raucous spirit that characterizes so much of the trumpeter’s work, yet the trio discovers such an audacious beauty and celebratory gusto in these sparse environments that the music feels uniquely Bernstein’s. It is also a rarity in his oeuvre for featuring Bernstein — whose mastery of the little-used slide trumpet has become so central to his sonic identity — exclusively playing valve trumpet and flugelhorn. This special engagement at National Sawdust celebrates the release of ResoNation Trio's self-titled album on the Royal Potato Family label, as well as the release of a companion album, Ultra Resonance, in which legendary producer Scotty Hard wholly reimagines the trio’s music.

June 27, 2026

-

The Grammy Museum is thrilled to welcome Julian Lage to National Sawdust in Brooklyn for an evening discussing his latest album, Scenes From Above, his creative process, and more, with a special live performance. This event is part of the Grammy Museum’s New York City program series, which brings the Museum’s renowned education and public programs to the city. “A New York Evening With…” is generously supported by the Dawn and Brian Hoesterey Family Foundation.

June 29, 2026

-

Join Koaru Watanabe and the rest of the Bloodlines Interwoven band for a night of music, film, and food as we celebrate the premiere of the Bloodlines documentary by director Jon Fine. Shot over the course of a year as Bloodlines progressed from informal gatherings to work-in-progress concerts in NYC to three unforgettable performances at the Big Ears 2026 festival in Knoxville, the film tracks the trajectory of this unique project which uses cultural exchange and personal histories as a springboard for making ecstatic new music. The night will include dishes from the Bloodlines Kitchen – recipes inspired by the bandmembers’ family heritage – followed by a screening of the film and finally a jam session to end all jam sessions. RSVP to attend.

July 1, 2026

-

In Summer 2026, National Sawdust will present a work-in-progress sing-through of Tamar-kali’s The Swann. This intimate chamber work is inspired by the life and times of William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved gender-bending resident of our nation’s capital. Swann was the first known person to dub themself a “queen of drag” and the first American on record to pursue legal and political action to defend the LGBTQIA community's right to gather.

July 10, 2026

-

Orlas draws its name from the Portuguese word for 'shores' or 'coasts.' Crafted by the dynamic collaboration of Victor Chicri and Vic Delnur, a father-and-son musical journey unfolds. This fusion encompasses, samba-jazz, bossa nova, disco-funk, and more, resulting in a captivating and genre-defying musical experience.

July 17, 2026

-

This concert celebrates the release of The Zarabanda Variations, a combined album and chapbook exploring the historical and present syncretism of Baroque music in 12 original songs, dances, and poems. A group of musicians convened by violinist/composer Keir GoGwilt, and in collaboration with acclaimed poet Edgar Garcia, bend the historical rhythms, rhymes and resonances of the Baroque. These artists traverse the colonial histories of the zarabanda dance in this unique multimedia collage of contemporary folkloric and improvised traditions, poetry, and new compositions.

August 31, 2026

-

New York-based singer-songwriter Loren Berí celebrates the release of his new album 'Stagehand' — alongside a companion book of poems — in an evening that brings together his indie music with premieres by contemporary classical composers. His songs like "My Brooklyn (Is Better Than Yours)" have been praised for their inventive storytelling and charismatic performance style. FLOOD Magazine called his breakout single a "wildly magnetic—and hilarious—homage to NYC," highlighting its bubbly synths and clever lyricism. Recent collaborations include the song "Al Pacino" with Glassio; contributions from Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Atoms For Peace, Dirty Projectors) throughout 'Alby's Ghost'; and his song "Greta's Inn", featuring Kishi Bashi, which was included in Fortnite.

September 9, 2026

-

The Healing Scapes is an immersive audio-visual performance by Nigerian-American sound artist, saxophonist, DJ, and producer Eli Fola. Blending electronic, ambient, jazz, and techno with elements of traditional West African instrumentation, the work explores sound as a tool for emotional and physical connection. Original compositions create evolving sonic environments that move between rhythm and stillness. Abstract visuals by Manami Sakamoto accompany the performance, deepening immersion and focus. Together, sound and image invite audiences into a shared terrain—slowing down, tuning in, and experiencing electronic music beyond the dance floor.

September 10, 2026

-

National Sawdust hosts the New York premiere of a [time] patterned, taken from harpist Lara Somogyi’s latest full-length work: a contemporary harp album constructing sonic environments, exploring how time is felt, shaped, and experienced through sound. Built from harp, pedal textures and electronics, virtuosic arpeggios, stacked tape machines, ambient processing, contemporary extended harp techniques, graphic scored symphonic language, string orchestra, and field recordings, the album constructs time not as a linear experience—but as an emotional landscape.

September 11, 2026

-

John Zorn’s newest project Flatlands is a dynamic power trio in the Simulacrum / Naked City / Insurrection mold—a new music super-group featuring Matt Hollenberg (Simulacrum, Shardik, Secret Chiefs 3) on electric guitar, Simon Hanes (Gargantua, Tredici Bacci, Tsons of Tsunami) on electric bass, and Ches Smith (Clone Row, We All Break, Laugh Ash) on drums. The music is intense, quirky, and wildly ecstatic—thirteen compact stop-on-a-dime kaleidoscopic compositions filled with virtuosic solos, infectious riffs, atonal melodies, advanced harmonies, complex rhythms, and plenty of the ever surprising structural innovations that has made Zorn one of the most continually fascinating composers of the past fifty years. Not to be missed!

September 12, 2026

-

We Were Fridays is an interdisciplinary music project led by cellist Jeffrey Zeigler - a deeply personal exploration of cultural memory and diaspora. It will follow a story that began in the Griot tradition of West Africa, travel to South Carolina by way of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, then north by way of the Great Migration, and beyond. We Were Fridays explores the music of the Gullah people of the Low Country of South Carolina, a community which to this day has preserved more of their West African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African American community in the United States. Gullah music has influenced spirituals, gospel, ragtime, rhythm and blues, soul, hip hop and jazz. We Were Fridays will extend this reach into the world of instrumental cello music. Told through cello, electronics, and dance, We Were Fridays will explore forbidden love, fractured lines, and complex legacies.

September 18, 2026

-

We Were Fridays is an interdisciplinary music project led by cellist Jeffrey Zeigler - a deeply personal exploration of cultural memory and diaspora. It will follow a story that began in the Griot tradition of West Africa, travel to South Carolina by way of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, then north by way of the Great Migration, and beyond. We Were Fridays explores the music of the Gullah people of the Low Country of South Carolina, a community which to this day has preserved more of their West African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African American community in the United States. Gullah music has influenced spirituals, gospel, ragtime, rhythm and blues, soul, hip hop and jazz. We Were Fridays will extend this reach into the world of instrumental cello music. Told through cello, electronics, and dance, We Were Fridays will explore forbidden love, fractured lines, and complex legacies.

September 19, 2026

-

Ruins (اطلال) is a three-act opera in Arabic, based on the epic 7th-century Arabic poems known as Al-Mu'allaqat, but set in the modern era. The opera reimagines pre-Islamic odes in the contemporary Arab world, as experienced by a young woman forced into exile and separated from her family and lover. The story begins in a refugee camp and follows her treacherous journey across the sea while her homeland is embroiled in war. The music of Ruins incorporates the maqam vocal style, as opposed to lyric singing, in addition to microtonality and improvised elements. Performed by seven singers and an orchestra of 19 instrumentalists from Middle Eastern, jazz, and classical backgrounds, plus analog modular synthesizer, the opera reimagines the modal musical system known as maqam, used in the Middle East and Central Asia, within contemporary operatic frameworks.

September 23, 2026

-

An evening of celebrated interpretations by multi-instrumentalist and composer Erik Hall, presented as a solo performance + spatial audio installation. Erik Hall's 2020 re-imagining of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is as adventurous as it is reverent, supplanting the original instrumentation for Hall's own keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers. It won the Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and Pitchfork described it as "shrewd, prismatic, organic... a minimalist standard freshly thrilling to revisit." In conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of the piece's NYC premiere—as well as Reich's 90th birthday—Hall returns to the iconic work for his National Sawdust debut, leveraging the room's immersive Meyer Sound audio system to present his one-man multi-tracked rendition in a transportive new light. Hear the prepared pianos, Hammond organ, electric guitars, and analog synths of Hall's Michigan home studio in kaleidoscopic surround sound, while he executes a grouping of the instruments live on stage—a distilled, in-person exhibition of the recording's soundscape.

September 26, 2026

-

Images of Brazil is a project of violinist Francesca Anderegg and pianist Erika Ribeiro: a decade-long collaboration exploring the breadth and depth of Brazilian music. The performance is accompanied by the work of Brazilian photographer Aline Müller — the images behind the music.

September 27, 2026

-

Lau Noah presents an introduction to her next project: a meeting between classical, jazz and folk musicians through the power of oral tradition. Music created, passed on and recorded using human ear, memory and skill, without it ever being written down on paper, yet not improvised. Noah's ambitious project highlights the complexity and depth of oral tradition as both modern and ancestral human language worth preserving and championing. Noah and her team will be presenting a short film, an early listening to some songs from the record and a live performance.

October 11, 2026

-

Something sacred is crossing the bridge. DVT — the trio of composer Damani Rhodes, vocalist VADIA, and poet Tongo Eisen-Martin — makes its New York City debut at National Sawdust for one night only. What happens when piano keys build cathedrals, a voice moves between shadow and flame, and words cut through silence like light through stained glass? DVT is the answer — a collision of jazz, poetry, and soul that doesn't ask you to listen so much as surrender.

October 16, 2026

-

Growing up in South Florida in a Jamaican household, June McDoom was raised around reggae music, which echoed throughout every room of her childhood home. Later, she discovered and nourished her own deep love for folk music and songwriting of the 1960’s and 70’s. While studying in NYC for a degree in Jazz Performance, her musical palette expanded to include the more intricate influences of jazz and early soul. Realizing that her favorite vintage folk music lacked artists with similar identities as her own, it became increasingly important for McDoom to carve a unique musical space – to push folk music towards a new and different audience.

October 17, 2026

-

“Where are you going, little cockroach? You were smelling crumbs in a forsaken shadow just a few seconds ago, I believe…” The Cockroach Diary is a song cycle for voice, classical guitar, and electric guitar in which a cockroach becomes an artist’s unlikely muse. Released in 2025, this one-woman operetta emerged during a period of artistic stasis and slowly became an emotional space mission—beginning in intimacy, drifting into outer space, and returning to Earth changed.

October 20, 2026

-

The Green Room Ensemble is thrilled to present the U.S. Premiere performance cycle of Eleanor Alberga’s Three String Quartets, along with the World Premiere of her Second Piano Quintet with the composer herself at the piano. Eleanor Alberga, OBE, is one of today’s most esteemed and influential composers and pianists. Originally inspired by a local music teacher in Kingston, Jamaica, her compositional journey began with her work for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, where she honed her evocative and riveting musical style. Her Three String Quartets stand as monumental achievements, each heavily varied in style and tone, yet all uniquely of her voice. They are a profound contribution to the genre.

October 30, 2026

-

Confessional, raw, poetic-alt-art-pop-piano in Spanish. From Chile to the world. Francisca is one of the boldest and daring artists of her generation in the Spanish language. From Santiago, Chile, to the world, album after album, era after era, she explores themes that are tremendously personal and intimate, raw, in an unapologetic confessional, poetic, piano-based form, with stories and truths that are very universal and compelling.

November 4, 2026

-

Meditations on the Gift of Awe :: love songs for earth & survival is an immersive, prayerful and celebratory, genre-defying song cycle. This work steadies its sonic gaze on healing and cultivation of calm via vocal soundscapes, rhythm & improvisation. With vocal trio and chamber ensemble, songs from Meditations on the Gift of Awe :: love songs for earth & survival and others from Morley’s catalogue will speak to the tenderness of our individual journeys towards collective liberation and love. Featuring Morley with Chris Bruce, Daniel Mintseris, Jack DeBoe, Chris St. Hilaire, Levon Henry, Arun Ramamurthy, Trina Basu, Kenita Miller and Justin Hicks.

November 7, 2026

-

For Diles que no me maten, every note is a small step into the unknown. The five-piece Mexico City band have always operated on a first-thought, best-thought basis, drawing on a jam-based, krautrock philosophy to craft intricate constructions of wiry art rock spiked with bluesy balladry and poetic mysticism. While their fourth album Escrito en Agua (Writ in Water) is their most consciously crafted and accessible to date, their founding principle of slow, wide-eyed exploration is alive and well.

November 12, 2026

-

In Wholly Unwinding, creator Hailey McAvoy lets the scars of growing up with cerebral palsy sing, taking us on her journey of healing and acceptance. Commissioned and developed by Hogfish in their regenerative arts residency, and directed and designed by Hogfish co-founder Edwin Cahill, this world premiere draws on an amalgamation of artists like Joni Mitchell, the Jackson Five, Hildegard von Bingen, and The Chicks, defying categorization as does any true definition of the healing process. Part musical, part folk concert, part old-time roof-raising spiritual with stories around the campfire, Wholly Unwinding unfolds as a pilgrimage through forests and oceans, storms and star-filled nights, as Hailey reconnects with her body, reconciles a lifelong spirituality, and embraces her identity as a queer woman, coming home to herself. It invites us all to come home to our bodies by singing the songs of our scars.

November 17, 2026

-

Opera Praktikos (OPrak) presents an ambitious reworking of Bellini/Romani’s classic bel canto opera La Sonnambula - sung in the original Italian with ASL integrated into the story and the score. Spicer Carr's arrangement of Bellini’s music for chamber orchestra, in collaboration with Brandon Kazen-Maddox's integrated ASL in Romani’s libretto, creates an exciting revisioning of this canonical piece from a disability perspective, resulting in a deeply familiar yet wholly new work. OPrak's 90-minute abridgement asks universal questions of belonging, examining the complex relationship people with disabilities have with one another and with the community at large.

November 18, 2026

-

Sensorium Ex is a groundbreaking new opera that explores the intersections of artificial intelligence (AI), disability, and the arts. Composed by Paola Prestini with a libretto by Brenda Shaughnessy, it features a predominantly disabled cast and a dystopian story about a mother and her nonverbal child. The opera uses custom-designed AI tools, developed with NYU's Ability Lab, to expand the expressive potential of voice for minimally verbal individuals. The visionary production pushes the boundaries of what it means to have a voice, paving the way for future artists with disabilities. Premiered May 2025, Sensorium Ex is by librettist Brenda Shaughnessy and acclaimed composer Paola Prestini, co-directed by Jerron Herman and Jay Scheib, with music direction by Elizabeth Askren. It is commissioned by VisionIntoArt in association with Beth Morrison Projects and Common Senses Festival. Developed and Produced by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. Electronics produced by Sxip Shirey. Sensorium Ex was presented at the RBO Shift Festival at the Royal Opera House in London in June 2026.

November 19, 2026

-

In Appalachia, farmers still practice the ancestral tradition of companion planting. Corn grows tall as a trellis, beans climb the corn, and squash provides the ground cover. Rising Appalachia cultivates a similar symbiosis in their music, where Southern folk traditions, New Orleans swamp culture, and Atlanta’s street spirit strengthen each other. Known for their seamless harmonies, songcatching and storytelling, the band has released ten albums and toured throughout North America, South America, Europe, the Celtic Isles, Australia and beyond — performing everywhere from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Red Rocks to NPR’s Tiny Desk. All the while, the band has cultivated a devoted grassroots following traveling to communities big and small by train, horseback, bio-diesel bus and sailboat.

November 21, 2026

-

In Appalachia, farmers still practice the ancestral tradition of companion planting. Corn grows tall as a trellis, beans climb the corn, and squash provides the ground cover. Rising Appalachia cultivates a similar symbiosis in their music, where Southern folk traditions, New Orleans swamp culture, and Atlanta’s street spirit strengthen each other. Known for their seamless harmonies, songcatching and storytelling, the band has released ten albums and toured throughout North America, South America, Europe, the Celtic Isles, Australia and beyond — performing everywhere from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Red Rocks to NPR’s Tiny Desk. All the while, the band has cultivated a devoted grassroots following traveling to communities big and small by train, horseback, bio-diesel bus and sailboat.

November 22, 2026

-

Composer Hannah Ishizaki is writing a one-act chamber opera in 11 scenes in collaboration with librettists Mark Campbell and Chiori Miyagawa for three vocalists, chamber ensemble, and electronics, based on the Japanese folk story, “Tsuru no Ongaeshi.” The story is split between a retelling of Tsuru no Ongaeshi (The Crane’s Gratitude) in 15th-century Japan and contemporary U.S. and Japan.

December 1, 2026

-

The Hildegard Commission Concert returns to National Sawdust to premiere groundbreaking new works from four of today’s most exciting rising composers, alongside featured compositions from four brilliant finalists. Step into a multi-sensory, immersive environment inspired by the extraordinary legacy of the 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen. Long before modern multimedia, Hildegard used vivid, intricate miniature drawings in her prophetic books to bring her complex spiritual visions to life in ways that Latin words alone never could. For this year’s commission, our four winning composers have composed music, each directly answering a distinct miniature illustration from Hildegard's codices. These historic images will be brought to life through dynamic animations and projections from a visionary visual designer, transforming the performance space into an interactive ecosystem of sight and sound.

December 10, 2026

-

Composer inti figgis-vizueta presents her 2026 debut record Music for Transitions, with a performance featuring GRAMMY Award-winning cellist Andrew Yee and the Germany-based Rothko String Quartet. Exploring Indigenous heritage and trans identity through playful, ecstatic soundscapes, the album exemplifies figgis-vizueta’s deep commitment to personal liberation through group improvisation. Recurring themes of land, wind, rivers, and cosmology are framed by constant musical transformation in what composer George Lewis calls “the dynamics of the decolonial.”

December 11, 2026

-

Saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Caleb Wheeler Curtis and venerated pianist, artist, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran celebrate the release of “Incantation” (Imani Records, 2026). Guided by their powerful and dynamic sounds and a shared fascination with musical ancestry, they explore space, time, and melody.

December 12, 2026

-

For the past several years Emily Wells has been knocking on the door of an opera. Each year the door cracks open a little wider, the story gets louder, and the collaborators become clearer. This opera is a story about remaking the past in order to understand, and perhaps change, the future. It’s a conversation between a “mirror father” living the life he might have lived had he come out in the early 80s instead of living a closeted life, and his “phantom daughter” who he begins dreaming about. The two discover overlays: their queerness, their art, their relation to capital and its effects on community. At the center is each one's desire to have a child but choosing not to due to their fears of the end of the world, his AIDS, hers climate catastrophe.

February 3, 2027

-

Peni Candra Rini, PhD, is a renowned Javanese singer, educator, and composer, known for blending Javanese Sufi poetry with contemporary music for both Indonesian and Western instruments. The Kronos Quartet calls her "one of the world’s greatest singers." A master of traditional forms like gamelan, she stands out as one of Indonesia’s innovative young composers and one of its few female composers. In 2023, she became the first woman commissioned to compose for the Mangkunegaran court of Central Java, and in 2024, she was honored with the court name Raden Nganten Tumenggung. For this performance, the artist will be joined on stage by musician, ethnomusicologist, and professor Andy McGraw and multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Shahzad Ismaily.

February 27, 2027

-