J. Pavone String Ensemble premieres Stalling Tumble || Levi Lu & Lesley Mok duo || Bongsu Park

@ Jessica Pavone String Ensemble Stalling Tumble: a piece in 5 movements Permanent Stance — collective presence that refuses dispersal. Stalling Tumble — interruption of collapse through care and intervention. Over Mutter — the quiet passing of knowledge beyond official spaces. Landscape Synonym — the reshaping of social terrain into something newly inhabitable. Assembled — what emerges when separate efforts come together and hold. Program Notes Jessica Pavone’s recent compositional work explores the collective ingenuity with which women have responded to exclusion, creating new pathways when existing structures denied them access. Her 2022 string sextet Clamor celebrated inventions developed by women throughout history to overcome barriers to their freedom. Stalling Tumble, for two violins and viola, broadens this inquiry, shifting its focus from individual innovation to the networks of care, collaboration, and shared knowledge that have enabled communities to persist, adapt, and flourish beyond official structures. These are not primarily stories of victimization, nor simply of individual heroism. They are stories of women building networks of care, education, political communication, healthcare, economic exchange, and public memory that sustained communities under systems of exclusion. In Chicago during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Jane Collective created an underground referral and abortion network that safely cared for thousands of women when legal options were unavailable. Under Russian rule in partitioned Poland, the Flying University held clandestine classes in constantly changing locations, circumventing restrictions on higher education for women and other marginalized students. In colonial Nigeria, women’s market and kinship networks culminated in the 1929 Women’s War, during which thousands employed the collective protest practice known as “sitting on a man”—using song, dance, occupation of space, and collective presence to challenge colonial authority. More recently, the Gulabi Gang in rural India has organized outside traditional political structures to confront domestic violence, caste discrimination, and systemic failures of justice through highly visible collective action. Pavone’s musical language reflects these histories by asking what new possibilities emerge when constraint becomes a catalyst for invention. Across its five movements, Stalling Tumble explores sonic possibilities that resist conventional expectations of the violin and viola through extended techniques and unconventional physical approaches to the instruments. These gestures challenge traditional assumptions about their capabilities, inviting performers and listeners alike to consider what can be discovered when limitations become opportunities for creative exploration. While rooted in tonal harmonic landscapes, the score incorporates flexible structures that grant performers agency in shaping each realization. Rather than prescribing every detail, the work depends on collaboration, adaptability, and collective interpretation. In this way, performance itself becomes an analogue for the historical networks that inspired the piece. Jessica Pavone String Ensemble is a recipient of a 2026 Chamber Music America Artistic Projects grant. The Artistic Projects program is administered by Chamber Music America and made possible with funding from the Howard Gilman Foundation. Stalling Tumble is made possible (in part) with public funds from the Queens Arts Fund, a re-grant program supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by New York Foundation for the Arts. About the Performers Jessica Pavone (viola, composition) Charlotte Munn-Wood (violin) Mazz Swift (violin) In 2017, Pavone formed the J. Pavone String Ensemble as an expansion of her solo viola practice, which continues to inform her compositional language and approach to ensemble writing. The ensemble’s music explores indeterminate structures, moving fluidly between metered and time-based scores, as well as notated and improvisational instruction. Within this system, performers develop a dual sensitivity—responding both to the score and to one another—fostering a deeply interconnected group dynamic. Each performance becomes a real-time reconstruction of the work. A digital clock functions as a structural guide, marking durations, transitions, and cues. Time-based frameworks allow musicians to navigate freely between sections, creating layered, evolving textures. This approach emphasizes collective improvisation as a shared fabric, rather than foregrounding individual virtuosity. Pavone’s compositional practice extends beyond traditional concerns of melody and harmony, focusing instead on sound as a means of shaping physical and cognitive experience. Her work reflects an ongoing interest in embodiment—how sound is produced, perceived, and felt—positioning both performers and listeners as active participants in the music’s unfolding. The ensemble has performed at Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), Bang on a Can Long Play (NYC), the Logan Center for the Arts (Chicago), Dartmouth New Music Festival (Hannover), Bryant Park (NYC), Winter Jazzfest (NYC), Roulette (Brooklyn), ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn), Firehouse 12 (New Haven), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (Asheville), Garner Arts Center (Garnerville, NY), and The Rotunda (Philadelphia). They have released four studio albums to critical acclaim, with coverage from The Wire, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, JazzTimes, and San Francisco Classical Voice. Brad Cohen (JazzTimes) called Pavone “a free-thinker who can’t be pigeonholed,” while Peter Margasak (Chicago Reader) described the debut album Brick and Mortar as “the most assured, bracing work of Pavone’s career.” The 2020 release Lost and Found (Astral Spirits) was named one of Bandcamp Daily’s Best Contemporary Albums of the Year, and praised by outlets including NPR, The Wire, and Jazzwise. Chris Ingalls (PopMatters) wrote that the music is “too stunning to lump into genres.” Queens, NY–based violist and composer Jessica Pavone has dedicated her practice to expanding creative horizons for the viola, “making a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log), and her music has been presented at prominent NYC venues including Abrons Art Center, ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, the Noguchi Museum, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and Socrates Sculpture Park. Pavone has released albums of her music with Tzadik, Thirsty Ear, Out of Your Head, Relative Pitch Records, and Astral Spirits, and was featured in NPR’s “The Mix: 100 Composers Under 40.” The New York Times wrote that her music is distinct and beguiling; its core is steely, and its execution clear,” and and in Wire Magazine, Julian Cowley noted that “Pavone not like other composers, she is uniquely herself, and from that stems the improbable strength of her music.“ Pavone has received grants and commissions from: Chamber Music America, Queens Art Fund, NYSCA, NYFA NYC Women’s Fund, MATA Festival, FCA, New Music USA, and the Jerome Foundation. Charlotte Munn-Wood is a violinist, improviser, and educator based in New York City. A graduate of the Contemporary Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Curtis Macomber, she also holds a degree from Western Michigan University, where she studied with Renata Knific. An active freelancer in the NYC area, she performs regularly with ensembles such as the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, New England Symphonic Ensemble, Garden State Philharmonic, Manhattan Symphonie, the Curiosity Cabinet, and Richmond County Orchestra. Her performances have taken her to venues ranging from Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Isaac Stern Auditorium to Roulette, the DiMenna Center, National Sawdust, and BAM, as well as on tour in Beijing, Tianjin, and Handan with Mojiao Wang’s opera Encounter. Mazz Swift is a violinist, singer, composer, and conductor, weaving improvisation, classic African American musics, electronica, and mindfulness into their work. They have composed for The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Kronos Quartet, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Silkroad Ensemble, and the PUBLIQuartet, among others. They are a 2021 United States Artist, and 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, continually creating orchestral compositions that involve Conduction, small ensemble works, and solo works that are centered around protest and freedom songs, spirituals, and the Ghanaian concept of ‘Sankofa’: looking back to learn how to move forward. Their newest album, “The 10000 Things; Praise Songs for the iRiligious,” is out now on New Amsterdam Records. Add to calendar Google Calendar iCalendar Outlook 365 Outlook Live