In this lunch-hour performance-lecture, three international and interdisciplinary musicians meet at Listaháskóli to share the sprouts of their new collaboration. Fluent in improvisation, new music, jazz, sound poetry, and experimental opera contexts, Joe Sorbara, Matthias Mainz, and Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings will share their sonic excitations through both performance and conversation.

Matthias Mainz (*1972) is a transdisciplinary musician, curating artist and author. From 2001 to 2012 he realised electro-acoustic music, scenographic works and theater. Since 2012, Mainz focused on questions of transcultural music and its embedding in national and international cultural policy with research in Kabul, Tehran and Istanbul and has been realizing curatorial, musical and artistic-scientific work as managing director of the civic association Plattform für Transkulturelle Neue Musik. As an instrumentalist, the combination of improvisation, microtonality, extended playing techniques and electronics on the trumpet formed the focus of his musical work until 2014. Since around 2017, Mainz has turned to the piano in the transformation of jazz and contemporary music with conceptions of multi-stylistic improvisation, preparations and live electronics.

Canadian drummer and percussionist Joe Sorbara has spent decades developing a reputation as a dedicated and imaginative performer, composer, improviser, collaborator, organiser, listener, writer, and educator. They have performed and recorded with Norm Adams, Ken Aldcroft, Anthony Braxton, Jared Burrows, JP Carter, Nikita Carter, Christine Duncan, Paul Dutton, Friendly Rich, François Houle, Jonathan Kay, Germaine Liu, Thollem McDonas, Joe McPhee, Hafez Modirzadeh, Evan Parker, William Parker, Allen Ravenstine, Clyde Reed, Steve Sladkowski, and Bry Webb, among many others. Joe has worked extensively as a workshop facilitator and guest lecturer and began teaching through the School of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Guelph in 2007. They currently serve on the board of directors of local artspace, Silence, and as the Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival.

Dr. Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings is a Canadian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist-researcher. They work with languages as dominant exploratory material. Rawlings’ books include Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), Gibber (online, 2012), o w n (CUE BOOKS, 2015), si tu (MaMa Multimedijalni Institut, 2017), and Sound of Mull (Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2019). In 2022, Rawlings co-curated SPHERE Festival for the Canadian National Arts Centre’s Orchestra in partnership with the Canadian Museum of Nature, Royal Danish Library, and Nordic Bridges. In 2024, Rawlings founded Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta (Glacier for president), Iceland’s first rights of nature movement. In 2025, Rawlings’ solo exhibition Motion to Change Colour Names to Reflect Planetary Boundary Tipping Points was opened in a decommissioned fertiliser factory. They teach at Iceland University of the Arts.