Nyahh presents Natalia Beylis, Joanna Mattrey, Seymour Glass & Ultan O’Brien

The electro-acoustic sound collages created by S. Glass combine tape music, electronic processing, voice, found sound, and chance operations. Event-specific batches of curated and prepared audio files are mixed live, along with the playing of non-musical objects. Selfshot video is screened during sets, which, like the audio, juxtaposes textures with multiple layers that wobble out of sync, jump cuts, and primitive animation. The overall effect is a perplexing time-based mapping of subconsciousness.

“A performance by Glass is a shifting composition: voices overlap, objects become instruments, fragments of text surface and vanish. There’s humor, disorientation, and moments of meaningful incoherence.” —Experimental Music Club, Berkeley, California.

S. Glass is a founder of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble (a large non-musical music group begun in the early 1980s), and Glands of External Secretion (a duo with rock musician Barbara Manning since the early ’90s). From the late ’80s until 2004, he was the main driver behind Bananafish. Since 2017, he’s performed as a solo artist and completed U.S. tours of the West Coast, New England, parts of the South and Midwest, as well and England and Scotland, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, and a handful of places in Canada. 

His most recent album is Posterior Vitreous Detachment, a 2xCD of video soundtracks released by Willie Stewart’s Nyahh label. He’s been self-releasing music and sound for years (Butte County Free Music Society and l’Esprit de l’Escalier) and collaborated with an array of others —Dylan Nyoukis (Scotland), Anla Courtis (Argentina), Noel Meek (New Zealand), Bryan Day (US), Andrew Zukerman (Canada), Cody Brant (US), Orchid Spangiafora (US), Bruce Russell (NZ), John Wiese (US), and Allen Mozek (US). Other labels that have released his work include Krim Kram (Ireland), Chocolate Monk (UK), Siltbreeze (Philadelphia), Spleencoffin (Baltimore), Blue Spectrum (UK), Independent Woman (New Zealand), Nashazphone (Egypt), Beartown (UK), Ikuisuus (Finland), Tanzprocesz (France), I Dischi Del Barone (Sweden), Coherent States (Greece), Feeding Tube (Massachusetts), VHF (Virginia), Opax (Italy), Un Poco Fría (Washington), Ultra Eczema (Belgium), Dinzu Artefacts (Los Angeles), Gilgongo (Arizona), Tailnia (China), and Starlight Furniture Co. (San Francisco).

Ultan O’Brien is a fiddle player and composer from County Clare whose work is rooted in the rich traditions of Irish music while reaching boldly into sound art and experimental practice. Equally at home tearing through jigs and reels in sessions across Ireland orexploring the possibilities of improvisation and contemporary sound, he moves effortlessly between pubs, concert spaces and more unexpected settings. Drawing on a deep inherited tradition and an inquisitive, forward-looking sensibility, O’Brien brings a fresh, vital voice to Irish music—honouring its history while subtly reshaping it for the present.

Joanna Mattrey is a violist and composer working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and
electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Joanna is a 2026/27 Crash Ensemble Resident Creator. Recent premieres include Battle Ready II (New Music Dublin, 2025), Battle Ready (Roulette, 2024), Arrhythmia (2023). Mattrey has had residencies with Roulette, Watermill, ISSUE Project Room, Banff, 14th Street Y, Wild Project, and MoMa PS1’s ALLGOLD. Mattrey has performed with icons Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Miya
Masaoka, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Billy Martin, Elliott Sharp, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Crash Ensemble, and Irish National Opera. Mattrey has released numerous collaborative recordings and solo projects including ‘Soulcaster’ (Notice Recordings), ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs), ‘Veiled’ (Relative Pitch Records) and her works have been reviewed by Citizen Jazz, The Wire, The Chicago Reader, Bandcamp Daily, Noise Not Music, and more. Notable festivals include Newport Jazz Fest, ArtActs, Huddersfield Contemporary Music, and Monheim Trienniale.’Joanna Mattrey is becoming a force of nature’ (Foxydigitals).

Natalia Beylis’ music revolves somewhere between sonic story-teller and multi-instrumental explorer. Based in rural Ireland, her work parallels the lines of her surroundings: creaking trees, farm animals, vocal samples taken from conversations with her neighbours, the northwesterly breeze, creatures rusting in the hedgerows, strange noises from the bog at dusk and rainfall. Lots and lots of rainfall. Her solo compositions and improvisations are a mix of garbled tape collage recordings, manipulated sounds of seemingly mundane objects, eerie mandola mantras and dreamscape piano voyages. While she regularly records on a variety of traditional instruments, she is just as likely to use non-musical sound sources within her compositions. For example, she recently released an album using just the sounds created by a domestic Singer sewing machine. Natalia regularly collaborates with cellist Eimear Reidy, percussionist Willie Stewart in the duo ‘Hedgling’ and is a member of the group BB84.  She also composes pieces for ensembles. Her latest composition, ‘Around Here, The Birds Plant The Trees’ uses conkers both as a sonic source and as a visual conducting aid to direct the players.

Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland