Wednesday, September 30
Horse Lords
Ben Van Camp
Doors 7:30 pm
$20 at entry. [Advanced tickets sales are now closed].
Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 2010. They evolved from the experimental collective Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with drummer Sam Haberman, guitarist Owen Gardner, and bassist Max Eilbacher, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though Horse Lords grew out of the fertile Baltimore noise and leftfield rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach is more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate.
Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to a split EP with fellow Baltimoreans Lower Dens, a handful of singles and compilation tracks. For RVNG’s FRKWYS series, the band collaborated with Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a one-time student of La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros whose just intonation chamber music was a crucial part of the post-Fluxus Downtown New York City environment.
With the relocation of three of the four members to Germany beginning in 2021, the potential for more further creative exploration, and performance opportunities including the Moers Festival (with an 11-piece lineup, interpreting Julius Eastman’s music as well as their own), the interdisciplinary phases of the band’s music was poised for fascinating new directions. The band observes “We are always trying to balance working within the limitations of the quartet and pushing beyond them.
For their second studio album on RVNG Intl., Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive!, Horse Lords have followed this notion and augmented the instrumentation, expanding the format slightly to include bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone (TAK Ensemble), trombonist Weston Olencki (Nate Wooley, RAGE Thormbones) and vocalists Nina Guo (Departure Duo) and Evelyn Saylor (Holly Herndon, Caterina Barbieri) across a program of twelve original compositions.
Ben Van Camp of Detroit prog-jammers MRKT kicks things off with a solo guitar and synth set.
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Thursday, October 1
BASIC
Chatoyant
Doors 7:30 pm, $16
Working with guitars, drum machine, sampler, self-built electronics, and all manner of percussion, BASIC synthesize the vast influences and distinct histories of the players, producing a boundary-less, rhythm-forward amalgam of art rock, trance jazz, collective improvisation, and humming electronics on their new eponymous full-length for No Quarter, released in June 2026.
Philadelphia’s Chris Forsyth, known for his lyrical guitar compositions and mercurial improvisations as leader of the Solar Motel Band, founded BASIC in 2022 naming the project in homage to the 1984 Robert Quine/Fred Maher album “Basic,” yes, but also to indicate a desire to get down to fundamentals rhythmically and musically. Shortly thereafter, fellow Philly denizen Mikel Patrick Avery, whose subtle and propulsive drumming has provided the pulse for Natural Information Society, Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, and Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra (amongst other projects), joined, bringing his unique combination of programed beats and acoustic percussion - a single drum with a metallic bell affixed and a variety of hand percussion run through a self-devised barrage of electronic processors and tonal filters (many controlled in real-time with touch pads) - to BASIC. Chicago stalwart Douglas McCombs came on board in late 2024 to tour their debut record “This Is BASIC,” thereby solidifying the lineup and expanding the group’s sound. As often heard in his work with Tortoise and Brokeback, McCombs’ playing in BASIC combines a mastery of musical negative space with memorable lines on Fender Bass VI, a six-string instrument with a distinctive twang tuned an octave below a standard guitar, allowing McCombs to function as both bassist and guitarist.
“Basic” inhales all the music that modernity's global connectivity (our blessing and our curse) allows us, tapping Tuareg rhythms here, angular guitar heroics there, scratchy funk, dubby low end shudder and Highlife-y rhythmic percolation everywhere. There's a fresh, intoxicating looseness to BASIC, exemplified by the ethereal flute & mutating samples of ""Index of Memories," the multifaceted interplay between drum loops and overdubbed acoustic guitar on "Premonition," and the keening delay feedback filling up cracks throughout. BASIC is joined on four tracks by the young Philly double bassist (and frequent collaborator of Forsyth’s and Avery’s) John Moran, known for his work in Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture and the Daniel Villareal Trio.
BASIC’s “Basic” concept is groove-based, full of space and sonic fields both evocatively ancient and bracingly contemporary. It is a truly collective product, balancing individual expression with surrender to the group. On “Basic” the result is entrancing and, if not “non-idiomatic” then something approaching pan-idiomatic.
Most exciting, perhaps, is the potential for a new renaissance of electro-acoustic groove music that fuses non-Western rhythmic boil with acid-psych moves and funky harmolodics that electrify both the body and the deepest neural pathways, and plays with the boundaries between art, technology and boogie.
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Saturday, October 3
Ellie Falaris Ganelin with Michael Malis, David Hurley and Joel Peterson
Doors 7:30 pm, $10–$20 suggested
Outstanding flautist Ellie Falaris Ganelin is joined by internationally-minded Detroit musicians Michael Malis, Dave Hurley and Joel Peterson, in a concert of improvised music with a focus on Hellenic and near-eastern influences.
Ellie Falaris Ganelin is the director of the Kombos Collective, which she founded in 2011 under the name Greek Chamber Music Project. She is a classically trained flutist who welcomes other traditions into the fold, including jazz, Latin, Balkan and klezmer music. She is active as a performer of chamber and orchestral music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born and raised in the United States, Ellie is Greek and Croatian-American, whose father hails from Thessaloniki. She’s a proficient speaker and lifelong learner of Modern Greek. Her work with the Kombos Collective has been a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and deepen her Hellenic heritage.
Ellie received her B.A. in Music from the University of Maryland, where she also holds a B.A. in Journalism and a Minor in French. For many years, Ellie had a dual career in nonprofit communications, while simultaneously presenting GCMP concerts.
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Thursday, October 8, 3–6 p.m.
GISES (2026) & WHEN THE SUN IS EATEN (2025)
Film Screening & Talk with Kevin Jerome Everson
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium
Detroit Public Library | Main Branch
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit
Free admission
Introduction from Media City Film Festival (MCFF), Trinosophes Projects, and Detroit Public Library (DPL), followed by a film screening, and a conversation with artist Kevin Jerome Everson and film scholar Yasmina Price.
Media City Film Festival and Trinosophes Projects, in cooperation with the Detroit Public Library, present a special in-person event with director Kevin Jerome Everson, celebrating a new celestial artwork commissioned by MCFF with support from the Knight Arts Foundation. This screening is curated by Media City Film Festival Artistic Director Oona Mosna.
Globally recognized for his prolific body of work featuring over 300 films, Kevin Jerome Everson has developed a distinctive moving-image practice attentive to labor, gesture, duration, and the textures of everyday life. Gises (2026) is Everson’s newest celestial film, shot from the unique vantage point of metro Detroit, and is the ninth work in his ongoing body of films devoted to celestial phenomena. Created at the Stargate Observatory in southeastern Michigan with generous assistance from the Warren Astronomical Society, this new film extends Everson’s decade-long engagement with all things superlunary: the sun, the moon, eclipses, and other stellar phenomena.
Working with Super 8 and 16mm Bolex cameras fastened to Stargate’s Kalinowski-Khula telescope, Everson observes the heavens through the material and optical possibilities of photochemical film, tracing the sun’s movement through changing registers of light, duration, and perception. The title Gises comes from the Potawatomi language, referring to the sun but also encompassing the moon and seasonal changes tracked through celestial cycles that have guided traditional harvesting and life in this region for millennia.
Also screening as part of this engagement is Everson’s When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) (2025), which takes its title from a Mayan expression for the solar eclipse, and captures 100% totality across three time zones—Mazatlán, Mexico; Carbondale, Illinois; and Cleveland, Ohio—during the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. This pairing of films extends a conception of the sun and moon not as distant objects of observation but as presences intimately bound to the measurement of time and human ways of understanding the world. Both films are scored by Virginia-based composer David Dominique, recipient of a 2026 Creative Capital State of the Art Prize. The event is followed by a discussion with the artist and visiting film scholar Yasmina Price.
Kevin Jerome Everson’s visit to Detroit is made possible by many funders and partners, including Media City Film Festival, Trinosophes Projects, the Knight Arts Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the Film Studies Program at Michigan State University, Warren Astronomical Society, Abrams Planetarium, Detroit Public Library, and NOVA24 Photo + Film Festival. Gises (2026) is a production of trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures. All films appear courtesy of the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures. Images © Kevin Jerome Everson courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures.
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Portrait © Oona Mosna courtesy Media City Film Festival.
Film still © Kevin Jerome Everson courtesy the artist; trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures.
Trinosophes Projects is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in the state of Michigan that supports, documents, facilitates, presesrves and furthers the arts and culture of Detroit. We are an independent, artist-operated entity located in the city’s Eastern Market district. Contributed and earned income goes directly into the hands of the artists we work with, so if you appreciate our efforts, consider making a donation to support our ongoing mission. Click here for a Paypal link.
Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 2010. They evolved from the experimental collective Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with drummer Sam Haberman, guitarist Owen Gardner, and bassist Max Eilbacher, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though Horse Lords grew out of the fertile Baltimore noise and leftfield rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach is more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate.
Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to a split EP with fellow Baltimoreans Lower Dens, a handful of singles and compilation tracks. For RVNG’s FRKWYS series, the band collaborated with Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a one-time student of La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros whose just intonation chamber music was a crucial part of the post-Fluxus Downtown New York City environment.
With the relocation of three of the four members to Germany beginning in 2021, the potential for more further creative exploration, and performance opportunities including the Moers Festival (with an 11-piece lineup, interpreting Julius Eastman’s music as well as their own), the interdisciplinary phases of the band’s music was poised for fascinating new directions. The band observes “We are always trying to balance working within the limitations of the quartet and pushing beyond them.
For their second studio album on RVNG Intl., Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive!, Horse Lords have followed this notion and augmented the instrumentation, expanding the format slightly to include bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone (TAK Ensemble), trombonist Weston Olencki (Nate Wooley, RAGE Thormbones) and vocalists Nina Guo (Departure Duo) and Evelyn Saylor (Holly Herndon, Caterina Barbieri) across a program of twelve original compositions.
Ben Van Camp of Detroit prog-jammers MRKT kicks things off with a solo guitar and synth set.
Thursday, October 1
BASIC
Chatoyant
Doors 7:30 pm, $16
Working with guitars, drum machine, sampler, self-built electronics, and all manner of percussion, BASIC synthesize the vast influences and distinct histories of the players, producing a boundary-less, rhythm-forward amalgam of art rock, trance jazz, collective improvisation, and humming electronics on their new eponymous full-length for No Quarter, released in June 2026.
Philadelphia’s Chris Forsyth, known for his lyrical guitar compositions and mercurial improvisations as leader of the Solar Motel Band, founded BASIC in 2022 naming the project in homage to the 1984 Robert Quine/Fred Maher album “Basic,” yes, but also to indicate a desire to get down to fundamentals rhythmically and musically. Shortly thereafter, fellow Philly denizen Mikel Patrick Avery, whose subtle and propulsive drumming has provided the pulse for Natural Information Society, Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, and Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra (amongst other projects), joined, bringing his unique combination of programed beats and acoustic percussion - a single drum with a metallic bell affixed and a variety of hand percussion run through a self-devised barrage of electronic processors and tonal filters (many controlled in real-time with touch pads) - to BASIC. Chicago stalwart Douglas McCombs came on board in late 2024 to tour their debut record “This Is BASIC,” thereby solidifying the lineup and expanding the group’s sound. As often heard in his work with Tortoise and Brokeback, McCombs’ playing in BASIC combines a mastery of musical negative space with memorable lines on Fender Bass VI, a six-string instrument with a distinctive twang tuned an octave below a standard guitar, allowing McCombs to function as both bassist and guitarist.
“Basic” inhales all the music that modernity's global connectivity (our blessing and our curse) allows us, tapping Tuareg rhythms here, angular guitar heroics there, scratchy funk, dubby low end shudder and Highlife-y rhythmic percolation everywhere. There's a fresh, intoxicating looseness to BASIC, exemplified by the ethereal flute & mutating samples of ""Index of Memories," the multifaceted interplay between drum loops and overdubbed acoustic guitar on "Premonition," and the keening delay feedback filling up cracks throughout. BASIC is joined on four tracks by the young Philly double bassist (and frequent collaborator of Forsyth’s and Avery’s) John Moran, known for his work in Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture and the Daniel Villareal Trio.
BASIC’s “Basic” concept is groove-based, full of space and sonic fields both evocatively ancient and bracingly contemporary. It is a truly collective product, balancing individual expression with surrender to the group. On “Basic” the result is entrancing and, if not “non-idiomatic” then something approaching pan-idiomatic.
Most exciting, perhaps, is the potential for a new renaissance of electro-acoustic groove music that fuses non-Western rhythmic boil with acid-psych moves and funky harmolodics that electrify both the body and the deepest neural pathways, and plays with the boundaries between art, technology and boogie.
Saturday, October 3
Ellie Falaris Ganelin with Michael Malis, David Hurley and Joel Peterson
Doors 7:30 pm, $10–$20 suggested
Outstanding flautist Ellie Falaris Ganelin is joined by internationally-minded Detroit musicians Michael Malis, Dave Hurley and Joel Peterson, in a concert of improvised music with a focus on Hellenic and near-eastern influences.
Ellie Falaris Ganelin is the director of the Kombos Collective, which she founded in 2011 under the name Greek Chamber Music Project. She is a classically trained flutist who welcomes other traditions into the fold, including jazz, Latin, Balkan and klezmer music. She is active as a performer of chamber and orchestral music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born and raised in the United States, Ellie is Greek and Croatian-American, whose father hails from Thessaloniki. She’s a proficient speaker and lifelong learner of Modern Greek. Her work with the Kombos Collective has been a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and deepen her Hellenic heritage.
Ellie received her B.A. in Music from the University of Maryland, where she also holds a B.A. in Journalism and a Minor in French. For many years, Ellie had a dual career in nonprofit communications, while simultaneously presenting GCMP concerts.
Thursday, October 8, 3–6 p.m.
GISES (2026) & WHEN THE SUN IS EATEN (2025)
Film Screening & Talk with Kevin Jerome Everson
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium
Detroit Public Library | Main Branch
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit
Free admission
Introduction from Media City Film Festival (MCFF), Trinosophes Projects, and Detroit Public Library (DPL), followed by a film screening, and a conversation with artist Kevin Jerome Everson and film scholar Yasmina Price.
Media City Film Festival and Trinosophes Projects, in cooperation with the Detroit Public Library, present a special in-person event with director Kevin Jerome Everson, celebrating a new celestial artwork commissioned by MCFF with support from the Knight Arts Foundation. This screening is curated by Media City Film Festival Artistic Director Oona Mosna.
Globally recognized for his prolific body of work featuring over 300 films, Kevin Jerome Everson has developed a distinctive moving-image practice attentive to labor, gesture, duration, and the textures of everyday life. Gises (2026) is Everson’s newest celestial film, shot from the unique vantage point of metro Detroit, and is the ninth work in his ongoing body of films devoted to celestial phenomena. Created at the Stargate Observatory in southeastern Michigan with generous assistance from the Warren Astronomical Society, this new film extends Everson’s decade-long engagement with all things superlunary: the sun, the moon, eclipses, and other stellar phenomena.
Working with Super 8 and 16mm Bolex cameras fastened to Stargate’s Kalinowski-Khula telescope, Everson observes the heavens through the material and optical possibilities of photochemical film, tracing the sun’s movement through changing registers of light, duration, and perception. The title Gises comes from the Potawatomi language, referring to the sun but also encompassing the moon and seasonal changes tracked through celestial cycles that have guided traditional harvesting and life in this region for millennia.
Also screening as part of this engagement is Everson’s When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi’bal K’iin) (2025), which takes its title from a Mayan expression for the solar eclipse, and captures 100% totality across three time zones—Mazatlán, Mexico; Carbondale, Illinois; and Cleveland, Ohio—during the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. This pairing of films extends a conception of the sun and moon not as distant objects of observation but as presences intimately bound to the measurement of time and human ways of understanding the world. Both films are scored by Virginia-based composer David Dominique, recipient of a 2026 Creative Capital State of the Art Prize. The event is followed by a discussion with the artist and visiting film scholar Yasmina Price.
Kevin Jerome Everson’s visit to Detroit is made possible by many funders and partners, including Media City Film Festival, Trinosophes Projects, the Knight Arts Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the Film Studies Program at Michigan State University, Warren Astronomical Society, Abrams Planetarium, Detroit Public Library, and NOVA24 Photo + Film Festival. Gises (2026) is a production of trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures. All films appear courtesy of the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures. Images © Kevin Jerome Everson courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures.
Portrait © Oona Mosna courtesy Media City Film Festival.
Film still © Kevin Jerome Everson courtesy the artist; trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures.
Trinosophes Projects is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in the state of Michigan that supports, documents, facilitates, presesrves and furthers the arts and culture of Detroit. We are an independent, artist-operated entity located in the city’s Eastern Market district. Contributed and earned income goes directly into the hands of the artists we work with, so if you appreciate our efforts, consider making a donation to support our ongoing mission. Click here for a Paypal link.
How does your support help? Your donations go directly to our programming, exhibitions, publishing, media manufacturing, archival work, artist commissioning, project collaborations, educational work and regranting in the form of artist prizes, awards and emergency assistance. We believe that now more than ever, this work is important to the cultral health of our community, both through supporting, highlighting and perserving our region’s cultural legacy and by keeping it in dialogue with devlopments in the rest of the country and the world.