BONES, ROCKS AND JACKHAMMERS

Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered.

From New York to Paris to the wild coastline of the West of Ireland, “Bones, Rocks and Jackhammers” is a concert reflecting on place, nature, and the environment. In this collection of solo works with electronics, Finola Merivale – named one of “23 composers to watch in 2023,” by the Washington Post – embraces microtonality, multi-tracking, and improvisation. This portrait concert celebrates the launch of her album  Abhaile – the Irish for “home”– for saxophone and electronics recorded with Merivale’s close collaborator Catherine Sikora. A new music video made by Institute Fellow Nina Berman will also be premiered, as part of a performance of one of the album works:  Closing Doors. The three works on the album are paired with two solo pieces for violin and electronics, performed by Maya Bennardo.

The creation of these works have been supported by a MacDowell fellowship, the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Cork County Council, the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and the Arts Council of Ireland.

The concert will be preceded by a conversation between composer Finola Merivale and concert pianist, Director of the Music Performance Program and Senior Lecturer in Music at Columbia University Magdalena Stern-Baczewska, both Fellows at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Concert program:

• Ceasing Sands (2026) 
• Arbores Erimus (2017) 

10 minutes intermission

• des os (2020)
• The Sea has Hooves, (2021; rev. 2025) 
• Closing Doors, (2025)

The musicians

Finola Merivale’s music has been described by the Washington Post as a “wild ride;” by the New York Music Daily as “the showstopper of the night;” and by The Wire as “edgy and discomforting yet exciting and distinctive.” Her music evokes socio-political issues, the climate crisis, nature, and a sense of place – both real and imagined. Recent accolades include fellowships from MacDowell (2025) and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2024), a 2025 Music Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, and an award from the New York Council on the Arts.  In 2021, Merivale and her creative team won the 2021 Fedora Digital Prize for As an nGnách/Out of the Ordinary, a community opera in virtual reality commissioned by Irish National Opera. In 2022, Finola’s debut portrait album, Tús – a collaboration with Desdemona – was released on New Focus Recordings. She is currently a Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.

Saxophonist, improviser and composer Catherine Sikora was first electrified by the sound of air vibrating in a metal tube when, as a child, she heard the wind playing tones and overtones in a metal gate. She has devoted her life to researching the magic of that sound with her saxophones. Sikora’s recordings have been released with Relative Pitch Records, Tripticks Tapes, Fort Evil Fruit and others. She has toured internationally, both solo and with Eric Mingus, Eris 136199, Brian Chase, Elliott Sharp, and Ursel Schlicht. Sikora was twice awarded residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris (in 2016 and 2020), and together with Brian Chase, they received a grant from the Irish Arts Council for a tour of Ireland. Her work is regularly featured on “Freeness” (BBC radio), Free Jazz Blog (Berlin), Avant Music News (Chicago) and A Jazz Noise (Barcelona). In addition to performing in tiny spaces that are the beating heart of improvised music, she has played several major festivals, including the Vision Festival (New York City) the Adelaide Festival of the Arts (Australia), Jazz em Agosto (Lisbon, PT), and Documenta 15 (Kassel, DE).

Maya Bennardo is a performer and composer who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Bennardo is interested in opening the dialogue and blurring the boundaries between composers and performers, and is devoted to performing music of the present. She is a founding member of the violin/viola duo andPlay, described by I Care If You Listen as “enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration.” She performs new and traditional repertoire with pianist Karl Larson in their Bennardo-Larson Duo, and was a member of the internationally renowned Mivos Quartet. In September 2022, Maya released her first solo record, “four strings,” with the kuyin label, with music by Eva-Maria Houben and Kristofer Svensson. Bandcamp named this record one of The Best of Contemporary Classical Records of 2022. As a chamber musician and soloist, Bennardo has recently performed at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Wien Modern, Sound of Stockholm and the Library of Congress on the “Betts” Stradivarius violin. Her work has been released by Deutsche Grammophon, Kairos, Another Timbre, kuyin, and Nonesuch Records, among others.

This event is organized by the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination with the generous support of the Columbia Global Paris Center, FEDORA , Culture Ireland, the Centre Culturel Irlandais and the Embassy of Ireland in France.

This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.