NYC pianist Eli Wallace brings his piano, bass, drums trio with a unique sonic language.
Julián Pujols Quall, Alejandro Quiles, and Cristal Sabbagh open up the night with a duo to send off Alejandro to Baltimore.
8:30 pm - Julián Pujols Quall/Alejandro Quiles/Cristal Sabbagh
Julián Pujols Quall - pianoAlejandro Quiles - electronicsCristal Sabbagh - movement
9:30 pm - Wallace/Motl/Neuburg
Eli Wallace - pianoKyle Motl - upright bassNick Neuberg - drum set
About the Artists
Eli Wallace, Kyle Motl, and Nick Neuburg formed their trio in 2023 based on a mutual interest in finding new and personalized approaches within the piano/bass/drums trio format. All three members of the group have dedicated a considerable amount of their musical work on an individual level to finding new sonic vocabulary on their instruments and the trio utilizes the collective contributions of each musician to the end of moving freely between musical spaces that deal with exploration of timbre, and also rhythm and harmony freely and in a uniquely personalized manner. The group has recorded an album which is due to release on Fundacja Słuchaj records in 2026.
Eli Wallace, pianist/improviser/composer, resides in Brooklyn, NY envisioning his own projects, and collaborating with other like-minded artists. His work as a pianist displays a proclivity to free improvisation, incorporating elaborate piano preparations that John Lewis (The Guardian) says is "...pushing the boundaries of the prepared piano." His compositions employ notational strategies to broaden how musicians produce sound and the ways in which they interact. Over the past decade, he appeared on dozens of albums and performed at venues such as Roulette, Brooklyn, NY, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL, Bemis Center, Omaha, NE, and Cave 12, Geneva, Switzerland.
Kyle Motl is a “spectacularly adventurous and dynamic” bassist and improviser whose playing is noted for both “iridescent delicacy as well as abrasive force” (The Wire). A frequent soloist, his performances “promise to change us by revealing things we could never have imagined” (Free Jazz Collective).
His music has been praised for its “speculative, many-layered evolution of imagination,” (Free Jazz Collective) and for “constantly confounding expectation” (Jazz da Gama). Kyle makes music in collaborative projects with musicians including Anthony Davis, Kjell Nordeson, Dan Clucas, Nathan Hubbard, Rocío Sánchez, José Fernando Solares, Eli Wallace, Nick Neuberg, and Earl Howard. He regularly performed in the Peter Kuhn Trio and Abbey Rader Quartet.
In the field of contemporary music, Kyle has performed with International Contemporary Ensemble and Ghost Ensemble, among others. His 2022 solo bass record, Hydra Nightingale, features premieres by Caroline Louise Miller, Anqi Liu, Jessie Cox, and Asher Tobin Chodos.
As assistant professor, Kyle teaches bass, improvisation, and contemporary music practices at University of Minnesota. His book, Bells Plucked From Air, sheds light on harmonic techniques for double bass. Kyle holds a DMA from UC San Diego, where he studied with Mark Dresser and Anthony Davis.
Nick Neuburg (b. 1992) is a drummer/percussionist/improviser/composer based in Brooklyn, NY. Nick has been actively involved with the improvised music community in NYC since moving there in 2018 and plays frequently, both as a solo percussionist, and in collaboration with other like-minded musicians. A few musicians with which he has cultivated ongoing musical relationships include Brittany Karlson, Eli Wallace, Drew Wesely, Sam Newsome, Kyle Motl, and many others. Nick released his first solo recording “Cryptic Exaltations” in 2023 on 1039 Records.
Julián Pujols Quall is a Dominican-American pianist and keyboardist, improviser, composer and educator from Chicago who has performed classical and jazz repertoire throughout the continental United States as well as in the Dominican Republic, Spain, Belgium, Puerto Rico and Mexico. A classically trained artist, Peabody Conservatory graduate, and DePaul University National Concerto Competition for Young Performers First Prize Winner, their work has found a home in jazz performance, improvisation and cross-cultural collaboration since developing experimental collaborative programs as a founding member of the Peabody Improvisers Collective. They are a curator for the Discoveries Hear & Be Heard series at Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and a 2025 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Institute Fellow. Julián has been lead instructor for the Afro-Caribbean Jazz Combo at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center After School Matters and is currently an accompanist at The Joffrey Ballet’s Grainger Academy. They are the host of “The Changes”, a trilingual interview show presenting local and international musicians on Lumpen Radio. Julián completed a 2024 Banff Center for the Arts Jazz and Sonic Arts composition/performance residency, released the single Rothko; Tlaloc and Totec with Carrier Records in 2023, and most recently had their compositions Chord Prelude and Moriviví premiere at the DiMenna Center for New and Classical Music during the 2024 Yarn/Wire Institute Festival in New York.
Alejandro Quiles is an Audio Engineer from Chicago, currently studying at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins. Alejandro mainly feels at home creating and recording experimental music. Alejandro’s time at Peabody has sharpened his ability to capture realistic, lifelike recordings, but much of his personal work is spent deconstructing this realism to craft unique atmospheres. Alejandro thrives on the challenges the art that he is working on presents and believes that it’s often in the limitations and disagreements where the most exciting innovation occurs. In addition to experimental music, Alejandro also enjoys recording and producing folk, jazz, and country music. Growing up in Chicago exposed him to a wide range of musical styles, fostering a deep appreciation for each of them. His work has also led him into the world of experimental film, where he explores the intersection of visual and auditory expression.
Cristal Sabbagh’s performance practice, rooted in improvisation and Butoh, walks a line between the everyday, the divine, the personal, and the political. In embodying in her art transformational memories while simultaneously celebrating pop culture and the experimental, she challenges power structures and awakens viewers’ senses. Working both in a solo capacity and with collaborators, Sabbagh is equally attuned to individual perspectives and collective structures. In various configurations, these collaborators have regularly engaged in improvised performances, opening up new avenues for Sabbagh’s material and conceptual exploration. Cristal has found that working with live improvised music has inspired her best work, which has become vital to her practice. She is currently curating and performing in Freedom From and Freedom To as an opportunity to combine most of her creative interests in a risk-taking and vulnerable way. It uses an ensemble of dancers and improvising musicians that are remarkably diverse in their approaches to dance, instrumentation, and backgrounds. In 2021 Cristal was awarded a 3Arts / Make a Wave Artist grant, and in 2023 she was awarded an Individual Artists Program grant from DCASE.In January of 2025 Cristal was included in New City’s Top 50 Players issue: People Who Really Perform in Chicago, in their Dance category.
You may also like the following events from Elastic Arts:
- Next Monday, 25th August, 08:00 pm, Chicago Jazz Festival Citywide: Christian Dillingham Quartet in Chicago
- Next Wednesday, 27th August, 08:00 pm, Chicago Jazz Festival Citywide: Mai Sugimoto in Chicago
- Next month, 4th September, 08:30 pm, Improvised Music Series: nnirror, Derek Worthington's Disaster Taxa in Chicago
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