The Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew in Brooklyn became a laboratory of flesh on October 9, when the Talea Ensemble presented the first installment of a multi-season portrait series. Composer Amadeus Regucera entered the space with a single declaration: he wants to sonify the body. From the moment the lights dimmed, the audience was invited to listen not just to notes, but to the physical exertion that creates them. Musicians’ calloused fingertips, the push of lungs, and the tremor of a struck drum all became audible characters in a performance that blurred the line between instrument and organism.
Regucera’s aesthetic is rooted in the idea that music is fundamentally a bodily act. He describes his method as beginning with the sensuality of music-making pushing each gesture to its anatomical limit. That philosophy informed every one of the five works programmed that evening, linking breath, tension, and electronic augmentation into a continuous narrative. The concert’s architecture—darkness punctuated by a single moving spotlight—served as a visual metaphor for the intimate, almost invasive, focus on the performers’ physicality.
Regucera’s body-centric compositional vision
Across his career, Regucera has pursued interdisciplinary collaborations, a habit reinforced by his role as senior curator at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York. This curatorial mindset surfaces in the way he treats each instrument as an extension of the player’s anatomy. For instance, violinists are asked to sustain generously long slides that mimic the stretch of skin, while wind players must exhale until the breath becomes audible resistance. The result is a sonic texture that feels as tactile as it sounds, a reminder that every pitch is the product of muscle, marrow, and intent.
The five works that defined the evening
A Blank Page, A Deep Breath
The program opened with a piece that plunged the sanctuary into near-total darkness, leaving only a solitary spotlight to outline the bassoonist and percussionist. A two-note harmonic motif on the bassoon, answered by a soft bass-drum strike, immediately placed the listener in a state of heightened awareness. As the bassoonist, Adrian Morejon, coaxed mournful, piercing tones, the percussionist Sae Hashimoto shifted from feather-light taps to thunderous, body-shaking blows. The stark lighting amplified the vulnerability of the performance, making the audience feel the physical strain as if it reverberated through the walls.
Raw
The second work introduced a quartet of violin, piccolo, oboe, bass, and percussion that engaged in a constant “clash-and-retreat” dialogue. Conductor James Baker guided the ensemble through jagged piccolo textures that tangled with wooden percussive taps, while the strings produced scratching bow noises and elongated slides that resembled the sliding of skin over bone. Joseph Jordan’s oboe solo demanded extreme lung capacity; he gasped audibly between phrases, turning the act of breathing into a percussive element. The piece never descended into chaotic noise; instead, each collision felt meticulously calibrated to expose the instrument’s materiality.
OPHELIA
In a curatorial nod to narrative, OPHELIA treated the ensemble as a single organism with a “heart that is a clock.” The eight musicians built an emotional momentum that swelled like a pulse, only to be tempered by a central piano section that offered a gentler, fluttering texture. Throughout, each player intermittently introduced fragments of verse, creating a layered “jungle” of sound that blended spoken word with instrumental timbre. The work demonstrated Regucera’s ability to fuse theatrical storytelling with pure sound exploration.
SKRWL
Inspired by Cy Twombly’s splattered canvases, SKRWL (pronounced “scrawl”) aimed to “perforate” the sonic space. Short, anecdotal gestures emerged from the ensemble, punctuated by stunted brass trills from trombonist Mike Lormand. The piece felt like an audible sketch, each instrument carving a line that intersected and overlapped, producing a sonic collage that was both chaotic and meticulously arranged. The brevity of the work contrasted with its rich textural density, leaving listeners with a lingering sense of having witnessed an aural doodle.
UNFEELING (She sketches out her dreams on his skin)
The finale stretched to forty minutes and showcased Regucera’s mastery of both composition and free improvisation. Instead of a traditional conductor, Dennis Sullivan operated a console of live electronics, moving his entire body to coax sounds from a massive horizontal tam-tam. His gestures—striking, scraping, and even hovering—produced a spectrum of percussive color that merged with amplified live instruments. Electronic loops captured isolated gestures, looping them into hypnotic beats, while an unexpected recorded scream of a man falling erupted midway, adding a jarring human element that reinforced the concert’s theme of bodily exposure.
Staging, electronics, and audience impact
The integration of live electronics was not an afterthought; it was a structural pillar. Sullivan’s board acted as a second set of “hands,” extending the performers’ physical reach beyond the stage. By looping breath noises, finger scrapes, and drumhead vibrations, the electronics created a continuous sonic membrane that surrounded the audience. The final scream, delivered through the main speaker, broke the immersive bubble, reminding listeners that the body can both create and endure pain. The
Regucera’s concert left a lasting impression: a reminder that every note is born from flesh, that darkness can sharpen perception, and that technology can amplify, rather than obscure, the human element. For anyone interested in the frontier where contemporary composition meets physical performance art, this Brooklyn evening offered a compelling glimpse of where the art form might travel next.
