Co-curated by Adriana Tranca and Jarrett Gregory. Doors open at 19:30. Get your tickets here

Callie’s presents The Third Room, a new performance series that opens the institution’s sound studio to the public for the first time. Transforming a space traditionally reserved for production into one of collective listening, the series invites audiences into an intimate environment where sound, process, and experimentation unfold in real time.

Across twelve evenings, pioneering composers Agnese Menguzzato, Hyunhye Angela Seo, Aida Shirazi, and Mariam Rezaei present new and evolving works developed during dedicated studio residencies. Each artist performs three consecutive sessions, treating the studio as a site for investigation, improvisation, and discovery.

A connective thread runs through these composers' practices as they continue to work with instruments they studied at a younger age – amongst them the Renaissance lute, piano, Iranian santoor, and turntables. Reimagining these instruments, they have evolved with them, mixing analogue and electronic sound vocabularies into progressive composition.

Working in the space between technical precision and emotional intensity, the artists explore cultural memory, hybridity, and diaspora, themes that have long sat on the margins of so-called “serious” composition. Their practices challenge conservatory hierarchies and canonical narratives about who makes experimental music and how.

Every session offers a distinct configuration of collaborators, techniques, and studio equipment, from modular diffusers to spatial interventions. Each evening builds on the last while remaining open to chance, error, and transformation.

The sound studio’s acoustic environment, typically designed for rehearsal and recording, becomes central to the listening experience. Equipment remains visible; process remains audible. The absence of stagecraft foregrounds the act of making itself and opens a rare window into the artists’ research-driven composition methods.

By inviting audiences into this production space, The Third Room redefines the conditions of witnessing artistic work. Visitors do not encounter a perfected outcome but are instead immersed in a living process: a shared space where the mechanics of sound are revealed, and where uncertainty becomes a generative territory.

coming up: 
Mariam Rezaei, May 21–13, 2026 

Aida Shirazi & Rey Khatami
Aida Shirazi is a composer, performer, and educator based in the United States whose work spans acoustic and electronic media. Her compositions for solo instruments, voice, ensemble, orchestra, and electronics foreground timbre as a primary structural element, drawing inspiration from the expressive qualities of language, literature, and the natural world. Shirazi’s music is described as ”unfolding with deliberation” by The New York Times, “well-made” and “affecting” by The New Yorker, and “unusually creative” by San Francisco Classical Voice. Shirazi’s work has been presented at festivals including Manifeste, Wien Modern, Berliner Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mostly Mozart, Acht Brücken, Beethovenfest, Ojai Music Festival, TIME:SPANS, the Istanbul Music Festival, and the Tehran Contemporary Music Festival. Her music has been performed in venues such as Maison de la Radio France, WDR Funkhaus, Radialsystem Berlin, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall. Shirazi’s compositions have been performed by renowned ensembles and artists including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Dal Niente, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Oerknal, Anssi Karttunen, Miranda Cuckson, and Parker Ramsay. Rey (Reyhaneh) khatami (ریحانه خاتمی) is an actress, director, and storyteller whose work moves between film, theater, performance, and personal narratives. From 2004 to 2012, she was actively involved in many independent theatre and performance projects in Iran, creating works that explored identity, memory, and the politics of everyday life. After moving to Germany, her focus shifted toward smaller, more personal forms of expression — storytelling, photography, and online performances. She also collaborated with Theater Marienbad in Freiburg and continues to create individual projects that connect art with questions of freedom, feminism, and human rights. Her most recent installation-performance, which first was presented in Kassel, took place in villa kuriosum in Berlin curated by Amirali Ghasemi.

Mariam Rezaei
Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award-winning composer, turntablist and performer working across experimental new music, free improvisation, mutant club music and hip-hop. Described by The Wire as “one of the most technically adept and creatively daring artists to use the turntable as a musical instrument,” Rezaei uses a digital vinyl system, allowing her to manipulate an expansive range of samples in real time using classic turntablist skills and her own innovative techniques. The Anglo-Iranian virtuoso’s latest solo release FRACTURED (Heat Crimes) has been praised by The Wire, Uncut and Bandcamp Daily, and was one of The Quietus’ cassette releases of 2024. Rezaei is a member of the international free music supergroup The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters and the pioneering Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez. Her co-composition with Matthew Shlomowitz, 6 Scenes for Turntable and Orchestra, was premiered at IMD Darmstadt 2023. Other collaborators include Jennifer Walshe, Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Edward George, Pat Thomas, Farida Amadou, Valentina Magaletti, Lasse Marhaug and Okkyung Lee.