On December 14, Rebecca Foon takes the stage at National Sawdust for a performance that bridges the worlds of contemporary chamber music and ambient sounds. Known for her work with Saltland, Esmerine, and Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Foon’s music blends cello, voice, and minimalist electronics and beats into evocative soundscapes that radiate both intimacy and strength.
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The evening begins with two solo performances: violinist Aliayta Foon-Dancoes, whose lyrical, spacious compositions explore texture and tone; and violist Nathan Schram, celebrated for his work with the GRAMMY-winning Attacca Quartet and his adventurous solo projects.
Foon will then perform alongside her sister Aliayta Foon-Dancoes, Nathan Schram, and Mishka Stein—bassist for Patrick Watson—bringing to life music from her forthcoming album Black Butterflies (co-produced with Jace Lasek). Together they create an immersive live experience that fuses classical structure with dream-pop ambient resonance.
Black Butterflies unfolds as a meditation on connection and renewal—an invitation into stillness, light, and transformation. At National Sawdust, Foon and her collaborators offer a rare evening of beautiful music with immersive elegant lighting sculptures designed by Kai.
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
Aliayta Foon-Dancoes
Aliayta Foon-Dancoes is a Princeton based, Vancouver born composer and violinist who grew up in a red house on the east side. She has made work for concert halls, festivals, galleries, homes, close friends, and the internet. Aliayta is best described as a court jester*, residing at the intersection between disciplines where confrontations, roundabouts, and accidents occur. Her work obsessively fixates on the collision of daily joy and the simultaneous erosion of faith in tomorrow, explored through satire, despair, willful ignorance, desire, and hysteria. Recently Aliayta has been making cubes - paper cubes, 3D model cubes, and 125 cubes that together made a singular omnicube. Sometimes she sees cubes when they aren’t there.
*the court jester historically was more than a comedian and entertainer, using humour as a form of critique - lampooning authority, and mocking the king.
Nathan Schram
Nathan is a two-time GRAMMY Award-winning composer and violist of the Attacca Quartet. Nathan has collaborated, in the studio and on stage, with many of the great artists of today including Björk, James Blake, Billie Eilish, Finneas, David Crosby, Becca Stevens, Just Blaze and others. Nathan is a PhD Candidate in composition at Princeton University and an Honorary Ambassador to the city of Chuncheon, South Korea.
Nathan has released three solo records of his own compositions, Let Me Out, Nearsided and Oak and the Ghost, on Better Company Records and New Amsterdam Records. As a member of Attacca, Schram has released records on Sony Classical, GroundUP Music, Nonesuch, and New Amsterdam Records. Attacca’s records, Orange and Evergreen, won GRAMMY Awards for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2020 and 2023. His arrangement of Radiohead’s 2 + 2 = 5 written for Becca Stevens and Attacca Quartet was also nominated at the 2023 GRAMMY Awards.
Apart from performing, Nathan is the Founder and Artistic Director of Musicambia. Founded in 2013, Musicambia develops music education programs and performances inside prisons and jails throughout the United States. As a deep believer in prison abolition and the irrepressible power of music, Musicambia strives to humanize the criminal legal system of the United States.
Rebecca Foon
Rebecca Foon is a cellist, composer, visual artist, and climate activist. A founding member of the Juno-winning ensemble Esmerine (Constellation Records), she has also released acclaimed solo works under her own name and as Saltland. She was also a longtime member of the montreal based groups Silver Mt. Zion and Set Fire Flames. Her music, spanning over 15 albums and numerous film soundtracks, blends post-rock, modern classical, and ambient elements into deeply immersive soundscapes, including the celebrated score for Shannon Walsh’s H2Oil.
Foon collaborates with Patti Smith and Jesse Paris Smith, and has worked with artists such as Colin Stetson, Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave, Tanya Tagaq, Patrick Watson, and Lhasa de Sela. Her visual art practice explores large-scale photographic lightboxes of natural landscapes and watercolors, most recently exhibited at Pen and Brush in New York City.
As co-founder with the Jesse Paris Smith of the nonprofit Pathway to Paris, she has organized international concerts to mobilize climate action. She is also co-founder of Junglekeepers, protecting 85,000 acres of rainforest in Peru.