“Where are you going, little cockroach? You were smelling crumbs in a forsaken shadow just a few seconds ago, I believe…” The Cockroach Diary is a song cycle for voice, classical guitar, and electric guitar in which a cockroach becomes an artist’s unlikely muse. Released in 2025, this one-woman operetta emerged during a period of artistic stasis and slowly became an emotional space mission—beginning in intimacy, drifting into outer space, and returning to Earth changed.
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Through theatrical interludes and surreal conversations with an uninvited houseguest, the piece reflects on vulnerability, resilience, and artistic identity. Blending contemporary classical music, storytelling, noise, and moments of humor, it embraces the uncomfortable, the absurd, and the deeply human.
This presentation at National Sawdust reimagines the work as an immersive audiovisual experience with visuals by Xuan, transforming the stage into a dreamlike environment that invites the audience along for the journey.
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
ABOUT NICOLETTA TODESCO
Nicoletta Todesco is a Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer distinguished by her rare ability to sing while performing classical guitar.
A native of Italy, Niki — as her friends call her — left home at 14 to study at the Conservatory of Trento, graduated with honors, and completed a Master's in guitar performance at the Conservatory of Bologna. In 2017, she moved to the United States to study at the Yale School of Music under the guidance of Benjamin Verdery.
In May 2025, she released her debut album, The Cockroach Diary — a song-cycle of original compositions for voice and guitar, engineered by GRAMMY-nominated Jennifer Nulsen. Her concerts blend early music, original works, and arrangements for classical and electric guitar, held together by storytelling and a singular stage presence.
Nicoletta has performed solo recitals across the United States, Italy, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. She has collaborated with Trinity Church Wall Street's contemporary orchestra NOVUS NY and Heartbeat Opera, and performs in a duo with flutist Laura Elena Gracia Guzmán and a trio with soprano Emily Donato and flutist Helen Park. Her composition for four guitars, Picking Berries in the Haunted Forest, won first prize at the 2022 Austin Classical Guitar Composition Competition. She is the director of the New York City Guitar Orchestra and artist liaison at Augustine Strings.
ABOUT XUAN
Xuan is a new media artist, filmmaker, and pianist working at the intersection of music, visual art, and technology. A trained classical pianist with a passion for “visual music,” she actively develops innovative, cross-disciplinary projects that broaden the immersive scope of new music and performance. Driven by themes such as alienation, power and multicultural identity, her work encompasses abstract scenography, experimental film, interactive installations, and public art.
In recent seasons, her close partnership with composers and performers have produced feature-length multimedia concerts including High Heart with GRAMMY-nominated jazz saxophonist Ben Wendel, it feels like a dream with pianist Eunbi Kim, Ex Machina with pianist Clara Yang, Shifting Ground with violinist Alexi Kenney, and Three Bones, a three-hour triptych with Kronos Quartet.
Her work has been seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of
Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago), the Smithsonian Museum of Art (Washington D.C.),
Baryshnikov Arts (NY), Constellation (Chicago), SFJAZZ (San Francisco), Le Poisson Rouge (NY), Design Biennale 2019 (Zürich), the RESCUE Residency in Santo Stefano di Magra (Italy), Sound Forms 2021 (Hong Kong), ibug Festival für Urban Kunst (Saxony, DE), Ad Astra Music Festival 2020 (Virtual/Kansas), the Mizzou International Composers Festival 2021 (Missouri), CAP UCLA’s Tune In Festival 2021 (Virtual/California), the MATA Festival x Found Sound Nation 2023 (NY), the Ojai Music Festival 2024 (CA), The Experimental Media Performing Arts Center at RPI (Troy, NY) and Carnegie Hall (NYC).