Batture Contemporary 2026 Concert #2

Phoenix is an improvised piece with a simple, pre-determined structure to allow for maximum freedom for the performers. For this performance, a predetermined length and instrumentation has been decided: approximately 10 minutes with 1 performer performing on woodwinds plus electronics.

Byron Asher is a saxophonist and clarinetist and composer based in New Orleans and working at the intersection of broadly experimental composition and jazz and improvised music. Raised in Maryland, he has become an integral member of New Orleans’ creative music community since arriving there in 2011, working as a bandleader, collaborator, improviser, composer, and curator. In spring 2024, he released two new LPs on Sinking City Records: Lord, when you send the rain, the second release from his celebrated large ensemble project Skrontch Music, and May Day, from his “free jazz party band” Basher. Basher’s 2021 release Doubles received 4 stars from Downbeat and was called “unbearably beautiful” by Pitchfork. The debut Skrontch Music recording was named was named a top 20 jazz release of 2019 by textura.org. In 2021, his duo recording with drummer Brad Webb, Little Bigby, was nominated for Best Contemporary Jazz Recording by New Orleans’ Offbeat Magazine. Byron teaches in the music department at the University of New Orleans and has performed and collaborated with a diverse array of musicians from New Orleans and beyond, including Aurora Nealand, Helen Gillet, James Singleton, Johnny Vidocovich, Gordon Grdina, Jeb Bishop, Brian Haas, Luke Stewart, Jeff Albert, and Brian Seeger, among many others.

Sonata for Solo Violin follows the anxiety an instrumentalist may feel in the minutes leading up to an orchestral performance. Drawing inspiration from my own experience as a musician with performance anxiety, this work explores themes of fear and unease yet still having a melancholic beautiful nature. The piece concludes with the tuning of the orchestra, represented by an elongated concert ‘A’. All sounds used in this piece were created using only a violin and bow.

Elise Poché (b. 2002) is a composer in New Orleans, Louisiana. While a native of New Orleans, she spent much of her upbringing in the mountains of Brevard, North Carolina before returning to Louisiana. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Tulane University with majors in Neuroscience and Music with a minor in Psychology. Elise also holds a Master’s degree from Tulane University in Music Composition, having studied under the guidance of Dr. Barbara Jazwinski and Dr. Rick Snow.

In an artform that constantly longs to preserve the past while simultaneously embracing the future, Puis qu’en oubli is an instance of literally doing both. Originally, Machaut’s rondeau [R18] is an intriguing example of ars nova style – adherence to poetic form, melody-dominant, and resolutely melancholic. The new arrangement takes on a fresh distinctiveness with expanded vocal forces and the addition of live electronics. During the premiere, the electronic sounds were created live on stage from the choir’s sounds. The swelling tones and glitchy textures were layered with the voices to create a unique sound not often heard in choral concerts. This project exemplifies the collaborative possibilities between conductor, arranger, and electronic music artist. It demonstrates the elements of contemporary vocal orchestration, live electronic creation, rehearsal technique, and electronic performance practice that were integral to the project’s realization.

Kerem Ergener is an electronic music composer and multimedia artist known for his architectural approach to sound, melding minimal, glitch-driven electronics with spatial audio, light, and atmosphere to create immersive performances and installations. His artistic output and research interests focus on embodiment through sound and the phenomenology of atmosphere, shaping space and place by developing holophonic and immersive listening experiences through Wave Field Synthesis and advancing the democratization of music-making through live coding. He earned his undergraduate degree in Mechatronics Engineering at Bahçeşehir University, where he helped establish the BAU Stanford Robotics Research Project Laboratory and conducted research on advanced robotics applications. Then, he continued his graduate education at Istanbul Technical University MIAM, and received his Master of Arts in Sonic Arts. From 2019 to 2022, he lived in Bangkok, Thailand, where he served as a lecturer at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Institute of Music Science and Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Experimental Music and Digital Media at Louisiana State University, with a graduate minor in Architecture. He has been featured on numerous compilations, including the Music from SEAMUS series, and has released solo work under his name and the pseudonym Le Horla. His works have been performed internationally in concerts and conferences, including NYCEMF, SEAMUS, and ICMC. He was honored with the American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for his visual work for David Walter’s Makrologos. In Fall 2026, he will join the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech as Assistant Professor of Music Technology.

Hyperspace is a piece that takes what we know and what we don’t know and mixes them together in a format that changes from performance to performance. Set amongst the backdrop of space, this piece aims to take you on a journey, where the performers can decide what the journey may entail.

Keri Devilynn is a Louisiana based composer most commonly known as Mrs. Tweet to her elementary music students, and Mom to her two toddlers. Over the past few years, most of Keri’s writing has been in arranging and orchestrating musicals for her school, Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, but has composed for large dance showcases, Southeastern Dance Performance Project, and well-known ensembles such as Hypercube. Keri finds her best compositions come from questions, and how those questions can lead her to finding answers she didn’t know existed, or, when she disagrees with those, creating her own answers. 

In Ursula K LeGuin’s speculative fiction novel ‘The Left Hand of Darkness,’ the term ‘nusuth’ is central to the mystical glacier-dwelling Handdarata’s spiritual practice and means ‘no matter,’ an attitude of inactivity and non-interference, drawing from Taoist and Buddhist principles. This piece is performed using Joshue Ott’s incredible custom ‘SuperDraw’ audiovisual software.

Nathan Wheeler (b.1986, USA, they/them) is a composer and media artist based in New Orleans. Wheeler performances include structured improvisation of spatialized sound, contemporary modern dance, and interactive media with custom-developed electronic tools focused on tactile control. Wheeler often writes poetic texts as scores for guided improvisation. Wheeler has opened for William Basinsky, Tim Hecker, Josephine Foster, and many others. Their works and collaborations have been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, Gibney Dance, Judson Church, Museum of the Moving Image, Fridman Gallery, and Off-Broadway theaters in New York, as well Berlin, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vienna, and throughout the US. Wheeler was raised in the foothills outside of Boulder, Colorado. They received a BM in Music Composition from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in Oakland, California, where they studied sound performance with Maggie Payne, Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, and John Bischoff. They studied Javanese Gamelan on a Darmasiswa scholarship in Yogyakarta, Balinese Gamelan with Pak Made Lasmawan, and American gamelan with Daniel Schmidt. Joshue Ott (Superdraw Software) is a visualist and experiential designer whose distinct cinematic improvisations and composed evolving images have been performed live and projected at Mutek, Carnegie Hall, Ars Electronica, Baryshnikov Art Center, Visiones Sonoras (Mexico) and Gyeonggi Media Performance Festival (South Korea). Ott has been a resident artist with Eyebeam (NYC) and Times Square Arts, and is a recipient of the 2022 NYFA Fellowship for Architecture and Environmental Design.

• Executive Director – Mendel Lee
• Executive Team – Kari Besharse (founder), Philip Schuessler (co-founder), Stephen Montalvo (Assistant Director)
• Artistic Directors
  • Batture Contemporary – Mendel Lee
  • Versipel Collective – Kari Besharse, Philip Schuessler
  • nF Residency Series – Maxwell Dulaney, Sixto Franco
• Production Director – Rick Snow
• Communications Director – Cari Sands
• Communications Specialists – Kevin Mah, Drew Farrar
• Board of Directors – Kari Besharse (president), Philip Schuessler (vice-president), Megan Ihnen (secretary), Jeff Albert, Rick Snow

Batture Contemporary was created and is run by Versipel New Music. The festival is supported in part by:

• a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council, as administered by Arts New Orleans. Funding has also been provided by the National Endowment of the Arts.
• a grant from the New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Fund

Batture Contemporary and Versipel New Music would like to give our heartfelt thanks to the following outside people who have offered their time and resources to make this festival possible: