Ars Nova Workshop presents a rare meeting of three singular improvisers — Bex Burch, Peter Zummo, and Che Chen — at Solar Myth on Tuesday, June 17, 2025.

Guitar, trombone, and Burch’s handmade mallet percussion (crafted from garden hose, bicycle tubing, metal strapping, and imagined bamboo) form the foundation for spontaneous music that is alive to chance and joyful noise. Best known for his ecstatic, modal guitar work with 75 Dollar Bill, Che Chen’s idiosyncratic path has woven through NYC’s underground scenes, Mauritanian guitar studies, and collaborations with global improvisers. Peter Zummo, a luminary of the downtown New York avant-garde, shaped his expansive trombone language alongside Arthur Russell, Trisha Brown, Nancy Graves, and others, mixing minimalism with the visceral and unexpected. Bex Burch, whose 2023 solo album “There is only love and fear” (International Anthem) was hailed by The Guardian as Contemporary Album of the Month, builds “messy minimalism” through repetition, chaos, and the rhythmic textures of wood, metal, and audience. Together, they promise a night of spontaneous creation that defies categories and welcomes the unknown.