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This will be a very special event! Sarah Ruth Alexander has a deep, magical sound—she is a masterful musician and artist. Her singing is especially powerful and evocative. The work of Coppice has been a constant source of fascination and inspiration for me since their genesis. They are one of the most creative and compelling groups making contemporary experimental music and sound art. ~ newmusiccircle We are very excited to partner again with @theluminaryarts to present an evening of experimental sound and performance. Sarah Ruth Alexander (Denton, TX) Coppice (Chicago, IL) Saturday, March 28th, 2026 | 7pm Doors / 8pm Show The Luminary (2701 Cherokee St, 63118) $10-$20 suggested sliding scale / info & tix: newmusiccircle.org Sarah Ruth Alexander is an improviser from Denton, Texas. As a multi-instrumentalist, her sets involve a combination of hammered dulcimer, harmonium, electroacoustic sound, and extended vocal techniques to create performances that are truly spontaneous and reactive to the space and audience. For over 15 years, Chicago-based duo Coppice (Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer) has created experimental music centered on auditory pairings. Currently, Coppice is exploring the timbres, tones, and shapes of idiophones (a musical instrument whose own substance vibrates to produce sound). With these instruments Coppice creates continuous overtones, minimalist textures, and beautifully uncanny sonics. Graphics by NNN Cook. Photos courtesy of artists.

Surveillance with fans, motors, and a magnetically-permeable sheet slid across Inductive Mixing Table I. The table was designed to bring signals into the electronic domain from the electromagnetic domain. It pairs with a multichannel power amp to pick up signals from speakers and other magnetic sources and dispatch them to loudspeakers in a space. The spatial layout of the pickups on the table is meant to reference the location of the sound sources in the room, or in the case of Surveillance, the L-R stereo field. Surveillance pans between two songs in Surreal Air Fortress, released by Entr’acte (BE) in 2018. Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #magnetic #magneticallypermeable #inductive #surveillance #surreal #fans

Wet Hologram’s rhythmic structure responds to an unprocessed recording of an Atlantic walrus’ (odobenus rosmarus) vocalizations emitted at surface and under water during breeding season. That hydrophonic recording was made by Becky Sjare at Dundas Island, Cape Collins, Canada, and was used with permission from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Also heard are physical modeling and modular syntheses, an emulation of an electric piano, Copper Plate, Multi-Material Filter, a singing glass, and vibraphone by Sarah Hennies @sarahhennies Simon Cummings described Wet Hologram for 5:4 as: “[resembling] conventional song elements, though its pulse is so laid-back as to be barely present, with passing sounds here and there that could just about be interpreted as a chord, a rhythmic fill or a bass note.” Boomkat @boomkatonline described the song as “what sounds like a fractured gothic torch song recorded by a shooting range.” Wet Hologram appears in Surreal Air Fortress, released by Entr’acte (BE) in 2018, and a live version is available on Bandcamp. The walrus image is a late 19th century line engraving from the Granger Collection. Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #walrus #odobenusrosmarus #matingcall #hydrophone #fractured #gothic #torchsong #shootingrange

A darkroom timer and a strobe light were used in Solvent/Emulsion, from Surreal Air Fortress, released by Entr’acte (BE) in 2018. The track is split in two parts (processed vs. independent signals): first featuring a Modified Boombox and the prepared Kinder pump organ, and then a Tape Case with transmitters, other electronics, and physical modeling synthesis. Simon Cummings described Solvent/Emulsion for 5:4 as: “a new collection of pulse patterns (sounding similar to the pops and surface noise of a needle on vinyl) become assembled. This is developed into something really beautiful […] where these pulses reduce to a soft ticking over and a delicate cloud of pitch floats around them. Here the perceived incidentality is absolute: the whole thing could plausibly be the result of processes with no human involvement whatsoever, and it’s really gorgeous.” …and Surreal Air Fortress as a whole: “I love how liminal this music is, how it flirts at the fringes of what we understand about the structures and elements of ‘song’, pushing and pulling at the limits of familiarity to create music that, when you take a step back from it, is in fact astonishingly strange and uncanny. The term ‘incidental music‘ won’t work for obvious reasons, but maybe Surreal Air Fortress is best described as ‘inadvertent music’. Coppice have always complicated our ability to parse and understand exactly what we’re hearing, and here they’ve taken that to a sublime new level.” Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #gorgeous #incidental #inadvertent #complicated #sublime

Flywheel (Flood Blowing) is a song that includes emulations of electric pianos, tape loops, and other simulated digital artifacts. The percussion sounds were interfaced with a pair of repurposed darkroom lights, and brass tubes. Produced in 2016, it appears in The Black Book, a compilation by iDEAL Recordings @idealbeast released in 2019, and in the self-released digital-only Head Turning Songs, which compiles all of Coppice’s songs with lyrics. iDEAL’s Joachim Nordwall wrote of The Black Book: “we decided to compile an album filled with artists we are very close to, others we admire deeply and a few we feel connected to in different ways. THE BLACK BOOK is indeed a celebration, of musical mysteries, energies and connections. Three LPs, six sides of music.”  Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #celebration #mysteries #energies #connections

Heard in Fake Memories Object is a take on a stage microphone and a filter, a Transmission Line of plastic tubing, plastic, foam, concrete, wood, aluminum, and electronics. Also heard are Copper Plate, physical modeling synthesis models of “fake air” (some particularly dusty), and other simulated instruments. Dan Mohr asked Coppice about the song, in an interview for Chicago Artists Resource: DM: The title of this piece leads me to question the authenticity of its content. What is the speaker’s role? Can he be trusted? What text is he delivering? JK: I think those are excellent questions. I would add: What is the temperature where the speaker is speaking? NC: Can fidelity be trusted? Do you trust timbre? Do you trust melody? JK: Was this all spoken at one time? Where is the arc of the song? What is a Memories Object? NC: His role is to use his voice to hold the illusion of song as object. TJ Norris @tjnorrisart wrote about the song for Tone Shift: “on Fake Memories Object the duo blends a muted timpani with a weathered, watery mix of rubbery keys and the unexpected. If you can imagine a work by Delibes as appropriated through a drunken stupor in the rain, that may only scratch the surface. This one is an ever-evolving cryptograph that dazzles.” Fake Memories Object appears in appears in XYZ, released by Falt @falt_records in 2018, and in the self-released digital-only Head Turning Songs, which compiles all of Coppice’s songs with lyrics. Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #copper #rubbery #weathered #unexpected #stupor #cryptograph

The pleasure of home. No-kink corrugated tubing was used in The Wall as a resonator and percussion object, paired with modular synthesis of identical sonic characteristics (or all the way around?). The song also includes physical modeling and modular syntheses, and a Wurlitzer 200A and its emulator. Simon Cummings described The Wall for 5:4 as “culminating in a quiet climax of emotional warmth, ruminating on “the will to dream and to breathe … it’s the pleasure of home”. The combination of the semi-irregular, left/right spacially-separated pulsed elements with the moody, brooding delivery of these words is magnificent; and an extra layer of incidentality emerges here, as the extent to which these words have been positioned over the top of the machine-music in a pre-planned or entirely serendipitous way (think David Sylvian) is ambiguous.” Boomkat @boomkatonline described The Wall as “a thicket of barbed guitar and prickling electronics [in] charred rubble,” and Surreal Air Fortress as “a series of liminal electro-acoustic enigmas and stark, poetic vocals […] Melding sparingly used, solemn vocals with atonal sounds at oblique angles, the album carries itself with a dead curious mix of brute elegance and incisive abstraction according to a logic that’s brilliantly hard to unpick, and a strange pleasure to undergo. […] Where so much music gives the answers before you’ve even asked a question, this album is a riddle within a riddle.” The Wall appears in Surreal Air Fortress, released in 2018 by Entr’acte (BE), and later in the self-released digital-only Head Turning Songs, which compiles all of Coppice’s songs with lyrics. The album was produced in 2016. That year, “surreal” was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year, while Oxford Dictionaries’ was “post-truth.” Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #postindustrial #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #nokinktubing #surreal #posttruth #enigma #oblique #liminal #solemn #brute #pleasure #riddle

This climactic moment in Dense Day Cooling is made up of physical modeling and modular syntheses, Copper Plate, a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass (c. 1970) and its digital emulator, coils, fans, motors, and a magnetically-permeable sheet. The lyrics of this song (below) are pulled from Jean Baudrillard’s Holocaust chapter in Simulacra and Simulation. Dense Day Cooling appears in XYZ, released by Falt @falt_records in 2018, and in the self-released digital-only Head Turning Songs, which compiles all of Coppice’s songs with lyrics. TJ Norris @tjnorrisart wrote about Dense Day Cooling for Tone Shift: “a jangly string rhythm paired with drained voice treatments. As the voice slowly starts to emerge there’s essence au Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode), the words are ingrained so deeply within fragmentary effects that you can only recognize every third word, or fewer. It feels as though it stops and starts, and over again – there’s no typical song structure here, it’s free, yet quite restrained, almost if it’s running out of power.” Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #copper #jeanbaudrillard #simulacra #simulation #magnets #fenderrhodes #freeform #restrained #noise Its cold light is a cold system (a cooling system)
Rekindle this cold event through a cold medium
For those who themselves are cold A tactile thrill from cold to cold Remake us a heated discussion
To capture artificial heat
To warm our dead bodies Expand the effect through feedback
So harmless to the imagination
No longer an image Suggest nothing 
To pass through A tape, not an image
No longer an image Ventilate It’s a cold light Desire no images 
Images of no desire Keep fake time

Coppice’s Copper Plate is a physical signal processor that amplifies sound through a copper plate while simultaneously picking up sound through the same plate. Eight piezoelectric discs are affixed to the back of an 11” diameter plate. The device’s electronics allow two signals to be taken in, amplified, and driven through the plate using any two piezoelectric elements. The remaining six can be selectively used as microphones to pick up the vibrations of the sound in the plate at different locations. Internal normaling allows multiple elements to be combined internally. Physical manipulation of the plate and placement of objects on the plate can be heard through the copper as well as altering the sounds that are being played through it. Copper Plate is heard in Afterthought from Green Flame, released by caduc. (CA) in 2018. Nick Storring @nickstorring wrote of Green Flame for Musicworks Magazine: “Green Flame is full of all the engrossing nuance and personality that animated Coppice’s previous recordings. One of its more striking features is the strange and potent sense of locus. The locations illustrated therein may not always be fully identifiable by the listener, but there’s always an ineffable somewhereness. It serves as an agent of cohesion over the vast and varied album–and the track titles (“Here,” “Cul-de-sacs”) confirm this. […] There’s a dimensionality to this music that takes volume out of the equation altogether. Instead, the various layers of activity seem positioned geographically–in certain cases there’s even a sense that a given sound is obstructing the view, concealing another texture. Even the most synthetic sounds feel connected to physics. […] Green Flame’s tagline “Music for driverless dream cars on their self-driven way to the junkyard” hints at the disc’s particular tenor. It’s quietly dystopian, covertly cinematic, with a touch of dry humor and a machine-like melancholy.” Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #copper #dystopian #dryhumor #melancholy #psychogeography #psychogeographyart

Handheld Samplers are part of a collection of hacked voice recorders. Each has unique controls for providing simple interaction with freely recordable signal. No electronic signal input or output connections are provided. Input must be acoustic; output must be acoustic or electromagnetically coupled through coil pickups or Inductor Table. Here they are heard in Is This The Spot? from Green Flame, released by caduc. (CA) in 2018. Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #chicagomusic #distortion

Green Flame, composed in 2016 but released by caduc. (CA) in 2018, is a fictional soundtrack to an imaginary film than no one watches. The synopsis of “music for driverless dream cars on their self-driven way to the junkyard” leads to this opening track, Ground, composed of multiple layers of physical modeling synthesis models including “fake air,” transmitters and interference, mouth-blown Capillaries (collections of brass and aluminum tubes), and an urban field recording through a long PVC pipe, to evoke a dull yet gossamer pollution as shifting noise energy. A psychogeography of place. It also includes hidden high pitches from a collection of Field Generating Boxes, or oscillators with no electronic output. The inductors used in the resonance tanks of the circuit provide effective electromagnetic output for pick up through the coils in an Inductor Table. The fields generated by the boxes interact with each other and can be altered by magnets and magnetically permeable materials. TJ Norris @tjnorrisart wrote about Ground for Tone Shift: “The ocean wave and/or windy effects that start off Ground are static and pressurized, like a fine mist drone or tuning into radio frequencies, or both. The track runs a generous twenty-two minutes and aside from the oceanic feel, taps into invisible circuitry that is minimal and slightly menacing. Their sources are not instantly apparent, however they offer a detailed website that delves into details. As the piece moves the initial sizzle washes away into sporadic micro tonalities and small buzzing electronics. It has the effect of listening to gradations of weather patterns, in particular incoming coastal storms with heavy winds. There’s a fair balance between the hazy gray background and occasional effect.” Thank you to @mathieu.ruhlmann for releasing this album on his label. Visit coppice.futurevessel.com and futurevessel.bandcamp.com #experimentalmusic #abstractmusic #musicalinstruments #electronics #electronicmusic #physicalmodeling #modularsynthesis #modularsynth #fakeair #pollution #noise #chicagomusic #psychogeography #psychogeographyart