First Artist Announcement

Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 7:30 PM
FUJI|||||||||||TA & Ka Baird / Actress / Team Rolfes
Lincoln Center Presents
Alice Tully Hall
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
1887 Broadway, New York, NY 10023
Choose What You Pay

Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 7:30 PM
U.S. debut
claire rousay & Martyna Basta / Keith “Giant Claw” Rankin & Julek Ploski
Lincoln Center Presents
David Rubenstein Atrium
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
1941 Broadway at W 65th St, New York, NY 10023
Free

Friday, October 23, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Hania Rani presents Non-Fiction, featuring Sinfonia Varsovia and Księżyc
Lincoln Center Presents
Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023
Choose What You Pay

Unsound New York 2026

This October, Unsound returns to New York. Our first artist announcement involves a three-night residency at Lincoln Center, presenting a series of U.S. premieres, new commissions, and rare performances. Unsound New York is part of the 2026 Soft Power theme, with festivals also taking place in Warsaw-Kraków (October 2 – 11), and London in late November.

The events at Lincoln Center run from October 21–23 with a program bringing together artists working across experimental sound, contemporary composition, audiovisual performance, virtual theater, and orchestral music. Alongside landmark performances from internationally renowned musicians, the residency also highlights new collaborations between Polish and American artists developed through Unsound commissions and residencies.

Tickets go on sale on September 9, and will be Choose-What-You-Pay as part of the Lincoln Center Presents series.

The opening night at Alice Tully Hall on October 21 begins with the North American premiere of Where Does Fire End?, an Unsound commission by Japanese sound artist FUJI|||||||||||TA and composer-performer Ka Baird, exploring breath, resonance, and voice as physical material. Electronic music pioneer Actress follows with the U.S. premiere of Radical Frame, a new audiovisual work reimagining both recent and earlier material with immersive visuals by Filip Popik and lighting by Shaun Murphy. The evening closes with Mustang Speedrun from virtual performance studio Team Rolfes, combining VR puppetry, motion capture, live musicians, actors, a motorized racing simulator, and live-edited camerawork into a singular theatrical experience. Musicians to be announced soon.

The second evening, presented in the Atrium as part of Lincoln Center’s Festival of Firsts, focuses on artistic exchange between Poland and the United States. claire rousay and Kraków-based composer Martyna Basta present the U.S. performance debut of hotel room, developed after a week spent composing together in rural Poland and accompanied by visuals from Theresa Baumgartner. The program continues with a new audiovisual collaboration between Keith “Giant Claw” Rankin and Warsaw composer Julek ploski, created through an Unsound commission and residency.

The residency concludes in the David Geffen Hall with two very different perspectives on Polish music. Księżyc, whose singular blend of minimalism and Slavic folk traditions has inspired a devoted following for three decades, marks the 30th anniversary of its landmark debut self-titled album. Following is Polish composer, pianist, and singer Hania Rani, whose work moves effortlessly between classical and experimental music. Rani presents the U.S. premiere of Non-Fiction – Piano Concerto in Four Movements with the 45-piece Sinfonia Varsovia, joined by Valentina Magaletti and Jack Wyllie. Partially inspired by the story of the young piano prodigy Josima Feldschuh, who was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, the work reflects on historical trauma through the lens of present-day horrors in Ukraine and Gaza.

Stay tuned for the next Unsound New York announcement, coming soon, involving a discourse program, a club night jointly presented with Dripping, and more!

Hania Rani presents Non-Fiction

The concert marks the David Geffen Hall debut of Polish composer, pianist, and singer Hania Rani. Rani, who shifts effortlessly between classical and experimental music, was awarded the European Film Award for Best Composer for her score for Joachim Trier’s Academy Award-winning movie Sentimental Value. Rani’s Non-Fiction: Piano Concerto in Four Movements is an empathic and moving work for orchestra partially inspired by the story of the young music prodigy Josima Feldschuh, who was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Rani explores Feldschuh’s short life through the lens of contemporary Ukraine and Gaza. Non-Fiction will be performed by Rani and the Warsaw-based 45-piece Sinfonia Varsovia with special guests drummer Valentina Mageletti and saxophonist Jack Wylie.

Hania Rani’s music grabs you — its gravitational pull sucks you into a hypnotic trance, regardless of your will. Pianist, composer, and vocalist, she has emerged as a genre-blending nonconformist who nevertheless has made a name for herself interweaving classical, jazz, and electronic influences.

Born in 1990 in Gdańsk, Poland, Hania began playing the piano at age seven. She eventually trained as a classical pianist in Warsaw and later pursued studies in Berlin, where she began to explore electronic music. Recently, she has settled in London.

Rani is a quiet star — more interested in connection than fame or spectacle – and constantly seeks the new in her work, challenging herself and her audience in an active process of renewal and regeneration. She’s since progressed swiftly through a series encompassing solo piano albums like 2019’s Esja, 2023’s more electronically inclined Ghosts, not to mention film and theatr scores, art installations, even her first piano concerto.

It was during the second half of the 2010s that Rani moved to Berlin to continue her studies at Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musikwhere she really developed as a composer, taking counterpoint and contemporary music classes as well as studying acoustics and collaborating with contemporary opera and theatr directors, as well as poets.. It was also in Berlin where Rani would start to explore electronic music and experience a growing sense of freedom, expanding what felt possible as a pianist and performer.

FUJI||||||||||TA 

FUJI||||||||||TA is a sound artist living in Japan. He creates his unique sound art and music which takes various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and noises. In 2009 Fujita hand fabricated an original instrument, a Pipe Organ. It has only 11 pipes and no keyboard. Fujita made it with his own imagination, without any specialized knowledge. It was designed to create a landscape rather than function as a musical instrument.

He got the idea from Japanese “gagaku”. The air pump (called “FUIGO”) which is kept moving with the left hand when playing, is based on an ancient blacksmith’s bellows. As the instrument is one of a kind, Fujita had to develop his own technique for playing it. The water element (with sound synthesized water tanks) has recently been added to his performance repertoire. The music consists of water sounds from multiple aquariums alongside his pipe organ, and his voice.

claire rousay

The prolific experimental-ambient wunderkind claire rousay spent a week in 2024 composing overseas in a secluded village in the Polish countryside with the Kraków-based composer and musician Martyna Basta. Their resulting joint show and album, hotel room, is a rugged travelogue of loose musical fragments, autotuned vocals, and complex atmospheres. The U.S. performance debut of hotel room features projected visuals by German artist Theresa Baumgartner. Next up is a new collaboration between American electronic producer Keith “Giant Claw” Rankin, head of the pioneering label Orange Milk Records, and Warsaw soundtrack composer and performer Julek ploski. Together, they present a new A/V work, the result of an Unsound-commission and residency in Warsaw.

Unsound is co-organized and co-presented by Fundacja Tone – Muzyka i Nowe Formy Sztuki and the Polish Cultural Institute New York. This project is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund in partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. The main partner of Unsound Web KRK – NYC is the Polish National Foundation. Concerts at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts are part of the Lincoln Center Presents Season. Curated by Mat Schulz, Unsound Artistic Director.