Saturday November 1 * 7pm * $10-20

Kirin McElwain is a cellist and composer working in the realms of experimental, contemporary classical, and improvised music. Weaving together classical and Baroque influences with an affinity for sub-bass and harsh electronic textures, her music explores themes of desire, shame, perfection, and belonging.

As a cellist, Kirin has performed on various film and television scores (HBO, National Geographic, Gimlet Media, PBS, NPR Tiny Desk), with contemporary artists (Post Malone, Ioanna Gika, This Will Destroy You), and as part of mixed media installations (the MET, James Cohan Gallery, Neue Galerie) as well as traditional classical and contemporary classical concerts (Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, Kimmel Center, Roulette), in addition to many community-run venues.

Her self-released 2023 EP Viriditas made the end-of-year lists at Anxious Magazine and A Closer Listen. Kirin has been an artist-in-residence at EMS Stockholm and Westben Center for the Arts, a New Amsterdam Records Composers Lab Fellow, and a Foundation for Contemporary Art awardee.
Kirin’s full-length solo debut Youth was released by AKP Recordings in October 2025.

Carolyn Zaldivar (she/her) is a Baltimore-based writer and artist. Through modular synthesis and hydrophone recordings in local river systems, and the reanimation of analog devices-- her compositions trace the entanglements between communication and ecosystems, asking how sound can archive memory and intimacy.

In addition to her artistic practice, Carolyn contributes to Tape Op magazine, leads editorial at independent label Mystery Circles, and recently joined The Tonearm staff. She co-organizes DC’s Sound Scene Audio Arts Festival at Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and has taught synthesis and field recording at American University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Rhizome’s Youth Electronic Workshop.

As a composer and sound artist, Rachel Beetz explores presence through sound and listening. Her works examine community, environmentalism, and women’s work through sound, textiles, and lighting while exploring hidden worlds of nature and machines. Beetz’s sound projects have taken her from a sunless winter fjord to the mountains of Southern California, and to empty grain bins of the American Midwest and have been featured in concert halls and galleries in Australia, Iceland, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has written works for Wild Up, Berglind Tomasdottir, and Jennifer Bewerse.