ways of looking

with guest artist Pamela Z
sunday, nov. 23th, 2025, 8:30pm
constellation chicago
3111 n western ave.
$20/$15 for students
mycelium new music joins forces with pioneering composer-performer Pamela Z to present ways of looking. In her first Chicago show since the pandemic, Z will perform a solo set which blends voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video, before joining mycelium in a performance of her piece with sextet Ways of Looking. The performance also features mycelium’s 2025 rhizome project, which showcases recent works by rising star emerging composers from around the country. These are pieces which may have received a premiere but no subsequent performances, or to which the composer may want to revise or add to, or which may not yet have a recording. As part of the rhizome project, three composers -  Sofia Jen Ouyang, Arjan Singh Dogra, and Carlos Bandera - travel to Chicago for a collaborative workshop, recording, and performance.
​​
program 
Rukh for pierrot ensemble - Arjan Singh Dogra
Spirare IV for pierrot ensemble - Carlos Bandera
Commotion for pierrot ensemble - Sofia Jen Ouyang
Solo voice and multimedia set - Pamela Z
Ways of Looking for performer and pierrot ensemble  - Pamela Z

guest artist
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working primarily with voice, live electronics, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live looping, she processes her voice to create complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. She has been commissioned to compose scores for dance, theatre, film, and chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, the Living Earth Show, Eighth Blackbird, the Bang on a Can All Stars, Julia Bullock with SF Symphony, and the LA Philharmonic New Music Group. Her interdisciplinary performances have been presented at venues including The Kitchen (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), REDCAT (LA), and MCA (Chicago), and her installations have been presented at such exhibition spaces as MoMA (NY), the Whitney (NY), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), and the Krannert (IL). Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang on a Can (NY), Interlink (Japan), Other Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Dak’Art (Sénégal) and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival (Wuppertal). She’s a recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MIT McDermott Award, United States Artists, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Herb Alpert Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  www.pamelaz.com

composers

Arjan Singh Dogra is a composer and performer based in New York City who creates art to understand and contextualize his relationship with time, nature, and his culture. He invites audiences experiencing his art to challenge their own perception of time, and reflect on their connection to the natural and unnatural environments that surround them. Arjan is particularly interested in exploring perplexing elements of lived experience, such as space, perspective, memory, and temporal realms, and seeks meaning in the places where these elements intersect, interplay, and contradict. Arjan graduated from the Berklee College of Music, having studied composition, conducting, and film scoring, and received his Masters in Composition at the Mannes School of Music where he studied with Christopher Cerrone. He also grew up studying Hindustani Classical violin with Dr. Sisirkana Dhar Choudhury, and Hindustani music continues to play a key role in his musical practice. In the Fall of 2025 he will begin pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition at Columbia University.
Carlos Bandera is a composer whose music is characterized by a glacial unfolding of sonic landscapes. He often expands simple elements into large-scale musical structures, through which he explores the interplay of harmony, noise, and texture. Bandera’s orchestral work Materia Prima, which was premiered in 2023 at Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra, was described by the New York Classical Review as having “one of the most immersive and elegant transitions from nothingness to complexity that one has heard.” His music has been performed by groups such as the Chicago Composers Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Albany Symphony, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra, the Westside Chamber Players, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, ~Nois, Ensemble Linea, Dogs of Desire, Hebrides Ensemble, and Omnibus Ensemble. He has been a fellow at Copland House’s CULTIVATE, the DeGaetano Composition Institute, Composers Conference, and the Underwood New Music Readings, and he has attended the Delian Academy for New Music and Musiikin aika. Bandera holds degrees from the Peabody Institute (MM) and Montclair State University (BM). He is currently based in Chicago, where he is pursuing a PhD in Composition and Music Technology at Northwestern University.
Sofia Jen Ouyang’s music explores the poetic and philosophical dimensions of sound as a site of entanglement, identity, and being. She is the recipient of two BMI Composer Awards, the 17th John Eaton Memorial Competition, the Fontainebleau Opus One International Composition Prize, and the Juilliard Orchestra Competition. She is the 2025–26 Artist-in-Residence of Telos Consort, a DeGaetano Composer Institute fellow, a Fromm Foundation Fellow at Composer’s Conference, and a 2025 Young Concert Artist composer-in-residence finalist.Her works have been performed by Ensemble Modern, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Juilliard Orchestra, New York Virtuoso Singers, JACK Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, and Riot Ensemble, at festivals and venues including the Lucerne Festival, MATA Festival, Mixtur Festival, Lincoln Center, Frankfurt Oper, and the Arvo Pärt Center. She has also collaborated with theater director Zhou Ke, visual artist Sydney Lee, and choreographers Fran Diaz and Kate Sponenburg.
She is Music Director of Westside Chamber Players and curator of the BLANC Pulsing Sound series. Sofia is pursuing her DMA in Composition at Columbia University with Marcos Balter and Georg Friedrich Haas, and holds BAs in Philosophy and Music from Columbia University, having studied with Andrew Norman and Amy Beth Kirsten at Juilliard through the Columbia–Juilliard Exchange.