Serenades for Settling Final Performance

Join us Sunday, March 1, 2026 at 2pm for the final performance of Serenades for Settling: Tending Ostreidae, a multimedia installation that questions human interaction within marine habitats created by Stephanie Rothenberg and Suzanne Thorpe. For this performance, Thorpe, a composer and electro-acoustic performer, will be joined by percussionist and acoustic ecologist Lisa Schonberg and vocalist Tiffany Du Mouchelle. Together they will perform their sonic sense of listening with oysters, a species that contends with escalating human disruptions as they listen for safe habitats in which to settle. The trio will improvisationally interact with the installation as moments of ecological balance, churn and possible human tending emerge, navigating the soundscape's speculative aquatic environment.  

Tiffany Du Mouchelle, soprano, is celebrated for her remarkable versatility, electric stage presence, and fearless exploration of bold, cross-genre repertoire spanning over 100 languages. A passionate advocate for new music, she has performed on 6 continents and has premiered nearly 100 works in collaboration with leading composers including Anthony Davis, Roger Reynolds, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Christian Wolff. Recent highlights include roles in Tiffany Skidmore’s The Golden Ass and Su Lian Tan’s Lotus Lives, performances with the June in Buffalo festival, and the album, Yvar Mikhashoff: Songs and Danceson on New Focus Recordings. With percussionist Stephen Solook, she forms the duo Aurora Borealis, the leading ensemble for voice and percussion repertoire, with their next album due in 2026. Her current projects explore extended vocalism, environmental awareness, and creative empowerment, themes she also integrates into her teaching. Du Mouchelle is Assistant Professor of Music at the University at Buffalo, where she directs the vocal performance program and has developed pioneering courses invocal embodiment,  extended techniques, and interdisciplinary performance collaboration.

Lisa Ann Schonberg is a composer, percussionist and author creating sound and multimedia works based in ecological research. Informed by her background in entomology, she is interested in how sound can reveal and challenge assumptions about insects and other overlooked nonhumans. Her recent work includes research on ant bioacoustics with Brazilian entomologists in the Amazon, the public sound installation The Insects are Present, the art-book and album Old Growth Playback, and works on endangered Hawaiian bees, fungi, and plastics. Schonberg has presented work at the Nobel Prize Museum, Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art, FILE Festival, Pompidou, Brooklyn Museum, American Museum of Natural History, and Museo Reina Sofia, and has completed residencies with Wave Farm, Labverde, the Banff Centre, Pioneer Works, & HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, among others. Schonberg earned a Masters in Environmental Studies at the Evergreen State College and a PhD in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Suzanne Thorpe is a performer, sound artist and scholar who couples critical listening with acoustic ecology, improvisation and technology. She crafts emergent and immersive sound engagements with electronic and acoustic instruments, featuring clusters of ambient saturation meshed with temporal intensities and possible melodies. Thorpe’s work reveals dynamics within human cultures and nature's systems, and invites discourse to support interspecies empathy, understanding and climate advocacy. Thorpe has performed and exhibited internationally at venues such as The New Museum (NY), Issue Project Room (NY), Roulette (NY), Caramoor Center for Music and Art (NY), Constellation (Chicago), UCLA Royce Hall (CA), Royal Albert Hall (UK), Paradiso (NL), (Roskilde (DK), Q02 (Brussels) and more. Additionally she has contributed to a significant discography as a founding member of the critically acclaimed American group Mercury Rev, with whom she earned a Gold record from the Recording Industry Association of America. Her work has also been supported by grants and residencies from NYSCA, New Music USA, the MAP Fund. Thorpe is currently Assistant Professor of Sound Studies at Manhattan University and remains co-founder and director of TECHNE, a nonprofit arts-education organization dedicated to dismantling social and cultural barriers in technical learning environments.