Dorothy Carlos and Isabel Crespo Pardo premiere Longingcore, a new work for voices, bass, and electronics that experiments with song form. In this performance, their second collaboration as a duo, they thread written and found texts into a series of vignettes, each with heavily processed acoustic sounds and pre-recorded material.

Longingcore takes the side of imperfection, drawing on broken signals. These disconnections between sound and source point to a familiar pressure for Carlos and Crespo Pardo—what they describe as “our need to remake ourselves in the digital environment.”

Dorothy Carlos (b.1998, Chicago, Ill.) is an experimental cellist working in performance and spatial audio. Her practice combines extended cello techniques with digital manipulation, bringing together free improvisation and computer music. She is interested in electronics as a way of constructing alternate sonic realities. She has presented solo performances with Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago; e-flux, New York; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; default, The Hague; CTM Festival, Berlin; the Center for New Music and Associated Technologies, Berkeley; Sustain-Release, Brooklyn; Chicago Jazz String Summit, Chicago; and the Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, Tenn., among others.

As a collaborator, she has appeared in projects at Swiss Institute, Artists Space, and Performance Space, New York; Issue Project Room and Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Untitled Art Fair, Miami; Gaudeamus Festival, Utrecht; Emerging Change Festival, Berlin; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; and FR MocA, Fall River, Mass., among others.

Recordings include Circuit Spectre (American Dreams, 2022), a collaboration with Brian Oakes; Split (D.O.T. Audio Arts, 2024); Ear World (29 Speedway, 2025); and A Reorienting Room (Random Man Editions, 2025), with Cam Collins. Carlos holds a bachelor’s degree from New York University, where she studied classical cello and anthropology, and an MFA in Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Isabel Crespo Pardo is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice moves between sound, text, performance, and visual forms. Improvisation is central to their compositional approach, with breath serving as a primary material. Their work is informed by Latin American folk traditions, Black American art, and queer and trans thought, often engaging archival sources and handmade processes.

Ongoing projects include the poemsong trio sinonó; graphic scores produced through embroidery and screen printing; and Mighty Angel…, a co-created experimental theater work. Under the moniker iiisa, Crespo Pardo is developing a solo practice that weaves melody with archival recordings from their family in Costa Rica.

They have presented their work at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; Bang on a Can’s LOUD Weekend, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Mass.; MATA Festival, Brooklyn; and Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, Tenn. Residencies and support include Loghaven Artist Residency, Roulette Intermedium, and a Van Lier Fellowship. Collaborations and performance projects include work with Matthew Barney, Sandra Mujinga, and Raven Chacon.

Presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society; organized in cooperation with the Logan Center for the Arts