Kylan Hillman / Sarah Parker / Forrest Wentzel / Caleb J Abner / Dominic Lingg
Kylan Hillman, Sarah Parker, Forrest Wentzel, Caleb J. Abner, and Dominic Lingg present an experimental concert centered on unconventional instruments, improvisation, electroacoustic sound, and expanded approaches to performance. The evening brings together composers, instrumentalists, electronic musicians, and improvisers whose work explores imperfection, surreal musical environments, unusual sound-making techniques, and new relationships between performers and their instruments.
Hillman performs on electric guitar alongside objects such as butter knives, metal picks, and combs, processing the results through custom-built digital programs. Parker’s saxophone practice incorporates modified instruments, tubing, animal calls, live electronics, and interdisciplinary performance scenarios. Wentzel creates music that combines surreal and natural imagery with electroacoustic sound, while Abner’s compositions span acoustic, electronic, electroacoustic, and noise music. Lingg contributes as a vibraphonist and improviser.
When: Thursday, August 27, 2026
Schedule: Doors open at 6:30 PM; music begins at 7:00 PM. The event is scheduled to run until 10:00 PM.
Tickets: $10–$20
Venue: Rhizome DC
Lineup: Kylan Hillman, Sarah Parker, Forrest Wentzel, Caleb J. Abner, and Dominic Lingg
Kylan Hillman: Composer, electric guitarist, improviser, and creator of digital instruments. His work examines mess, imperfection, perception, time, memory, indeterminacy, and the transformation of musical material. His solo performances use unconventional guitar techniques, unusual physical objects, and self-designed digital processing.
Sarah Parker: Baltimore-based composer and saxophonist whose work challenges conventional ideas about the saxophone and the performer-instrument relationship. Her performances have involved instrument modifications, animal calls, electronics, a preserved heart specimen converted into an electronic instrument, and deliberately theatrical interdisciplinary situations. She also performs with the trio Sophie Rollover and Wieldflower Arts, and works as an educator.
Forrest Wentzel: Composer of music that moves between surreal and natural sound worlds. His concert works frequently use electroacoustic techniques to create uncanny environments and personal narratives. His music has been presented at the Splice Institute and the Nief-Norf Summer Festival. He has also written, recorded, and produced more than 250 short television cues, and performs improvised music with Sophie Rollover alongside Michael Begay and Sarah Parker.
Caleb J. Abner: Boston-born composer and doctoral candidate at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins, where he studies with Felipe Lara. His output includes acoustic, electronic, electroacoustic, and noise music. His interests include speech- and rap-derived rhythms, overtone-based harmony, musique concrète instrumentale, functional harmony, non-diatonic melody, perceptually ambiguous large-scale structures, self-referential classical forms, dynamic stasis, and static dynamicism.
Dominic Lingg: Baltimore-based vibraphonist and improviser from North Carolina. Lingg is a third-year Jazz Performance student at the Peabody Institute and focuses on the vibraphone and mallet-based performance.
Run time: The listed schedule spans 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM, with music starting at 7:00 PM.
Ages: No age restriction is listed.