Reflections on our recent production at Theater for the New City, and the continuing evolution of music, movement, and experimental theater.

By Patrick Grant | October 2026

What happens when an orchestra refuses to sit still? For the past fifteen years, my ensemble Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars and I have been exploring that question in streets, parks, museums, and public spaces around the world. With Necessary Music Only, presented September 17 through October 4 at Theater for the New City, we brought our distinctive musical philosophy indoors, transforming the Johnson Theater into a laboratory for sound, movement, and theatrical expression.

At the heart of this production was an idea I’ve been pursuing for many years: that music need not simply accompany movement, but that movement itself can become an essential part of musical composition.

I founded Tilted Axes in 2011 with the idea of creating an ensemble that could take music out into the world. Our musicians perform on electric guitars powered by portable amplifiers, allowing us to move freely through performance spaces while maintaining the complexity and precision of a chamber ensemble. My compositions draw on influences ranging from minimalist repetition and Baroque counterpoint to rock, world music traditions, and experimental performance art.

I’ve never considered Tilted Axes to be a conventional guitar orchestra or a rock band. Our identity lies somewhere between the two, with elements of dance, procession, and ritual incorporated into the musical experience.

In Necessary Music Only, we brought these elements together within a more deliberately theatrical framework.

Music as Movement

Working with choreographer Christopher Caines, I’ve been developing a performance vocabulary in which musicians become moving components of a larger visual and sonic architecture. Instead of occupying fixed positions, our performers navigate geometric formations, intersecting pathways, and shifting configurations that continually redefine the relationship between sound and space.

The implications are more substantial than they might initially appear.

In a traditional concert, the audience’s attention is directed toward a relatively stable arrangement of performers. In our work, the arrangement itself becomes part of the composition. Musical lines can be understood not only through pitch, rhythm, and harmony, but through the changing physical relationships between the players.

This approach has always interested me because of its relationship to experimental dance and music theater, particularly the interdisciplinary traditions associated with the downtown New York arts scene.

The absence of spoken dialogue or a conventional narrative is central to the concept. Rather than telling a story through characters and events, I wanted the work to suggest dramatic relationships through musical interaction, physical proximity, collective action, and contrast.

It’s theater in which the music carries the dramatic argument.

An Orchestra of Individual Voices

The musical foundation of Tilted Axes is polyphony, the simultaneous interaction of independent musical lines.

My compositions frequently employ interlocking rhythmic patterns, repeated figures, shifting accents, and contrasting instrumental textures. These techniques can create music that appears deceptively simple on the surface while revealing considerable structural complexity.

The electric guitar is particularly well suited to this approach. Its capacity for both percussive articulation and sustained resonance allows individual performers to move between rhythmic, melodic, and textural roles.

Within the ensemble, the addition of bass and live percussion provides both rhythmic propulsion and a counterweight to the guitars’ interwoven patterns.

Unlike the familiar guitar-centered spectacle of rock performance, my emphasis is on collective musical organization. Individual virtuosity serves a larger structure, with the ensemble functioning as a network of interdependent voices.

I’ve often thought of the ensemble in terms of a gamelan orchestra, where musical complexity emerges through the coordinated interaction of distinct parts. There are also connections to minimalist composition, although my musical language embraces a broader range of rhythmic and harmonic contrasts.

One of the things that continues to interest me most is the possibility of making musical structure physically visible. Counterpoint, normally experienced as an auditory phenomenon, acquires a spatial dimension when the musicians themselves become moving lines.

INFLUX: A Hidden Symphony

At the heart of Necessary Music Only lies what I think of as a hidden symphony. INFLUX, an ambitious composition in four movements, provides a larger musical architecture for the production, with each movement arriving at the conclusion of a successive quarter of the performance.

It is among the most intricate, demanding, and richly constructed works I’ve written for Tilted Axes, and I believe it represents an important step forward in the evolution of our musical language.

The composition draws upon our established vocabulary of interlocking rhythms, independent melodic lines, and shifting metric relationships, but develops these elements into something considerably more expansive. Musical ideas emerge, intersect, separate, and reassemble, creating an elaborate network of relationships that demands extraordinary concentration from the performers.

There is an almost orchestral ambition to the writing. Although the instrumentation remains rooted in electric guitars, bass, and percussion, I wanted the density of the counterpoint and the independence of the individual voices to suggest a musical world extending well beyond the conventional expectations of a guitar ensemble.

Perhaps most intriguingly, certain movements seem to evoke the psychological and emotional dimensions of space exploration. I hear something of the vast distances between planetary bodies, the mathematical precision of orbital trajectories, and the fragile exchanges of information between astronauts and ground control.

The effect isn’t intended as a literal depiction of outer space, but rather an exploration of the human experience of navigating it. Musical phrases can suggest transmissions sent across enormous distances, signals answered or interrupted, and independent objects moving through a shared gravitational system.

These associations seem particularly appropriate for an ensemble whose musicians are themselves engaged in a continual negotiation of distance, timing, and collective coordination.

Because INFLUX is such a recent and demanding addition to our repertoire, we performed its four movements stationary, with the musicians reading from their scores. This provided a contrast to the choreographed works surrounding them. For a group whose identity is so closely associated with mobility, these passages offered an opportunity to concentrate attention on the extraordinary detail of the musical writing itself.

I don’t consider this a departure from our theatrical ambitions, but rather a stage in the work’s development. My intention is to bring INFLUX into the choreographic language we’ve established elsewhere in the production, allowing its elaborate musical structures to acquire a corresponding physical expression.

The prospect is exciting, and not without its challenges. Music of such rhythmic and contrapuntal complexity requires considerable precision, particularly when combined with movement. But I also see opportunities for a deeper integration of choreography and composition.

For me, INFLUX is more than a technical accomplishment or a series of evocative sonic landscapes. Its four-movement structure gives Necessary Music Only a sense of larger musical purpose, functioning almost as a symphony concealed within the theatrical presentation.

It also points toward a significant new direction for Tilted Axes. Our familiar techniques are no longer simply the basis for individual compositions or mobile performance situations. They have become the building blocks of a more extended, architecturally ambitious musical form.

If Necessary Music Only represents our growing confidence as a theatrical ensemble, INFLUX suggests an equally important evolution in our compositional identity.

From the Street to the Stage

Perhaps the most significant development represented by Necessary Music Only is our continuing transition from public-space intervention to theatrical presentation.

Tilted Axes originally distinguished itself by bringing unexpected musical experiences directly into everyday environments. Our processions challenged the assumption that audiences must enter a concert hall to encounter serious contemporary music.

In the theater, however, the relationship changes. The audience arrives expecting a performance, and we have to sustain attention within a defined dramatic framework.

That shift presents both opportunities and artistic challenges.

The controlled environment allows choreography, lighting, and visual media to assume more substantial roles. It also places greater emphasis on pacing, transitions, and the overall shape of the production. What might function as an exhilarating encounter on a city street must develop a different kind of continuity over an extended theatrical work.

This has become one of the central artistic questions for me: how can an ensemble whose identity is rooted in mobility and unpredictability preserve those qualities within the formal boundaries of a stage production?

I think the answer lies less in recreating the spontaneity of street performance than in developing a theatrical language appropriate to our distinctive musical resources.

My collaboration with Christopher Caines has been especially important in this respect. His choreography provides a means of organizing the musicians’ movements without reducing them to decorative accompaniment. Our challenge is to establish a genuine relationship between musical structure and physical action, allowing each to inform the other.

The production’s use of lighting and visual media further extends that vocabulary, suggesting possibilities for a form of music theater in which instrumental performance remains the primary expressive medium.

A Distinctive Place in Contemporary Performance

There are precedents for combining instrumental music with theatrical movement, from the instrumental theater of Mauricio Kagel to the multimedia productions of Robert Wilson and the choreographic structures associated with experimental opera.

These are traditions I’ve long been interested in, but Tilted Axes approaches this territory from a different direction.

Our starting point is not opera, dance, or traditional theater, but the practical and musical possibilities of a mobile electric-guitar ensemble.

That distinction matters to me. Rather than adding musicians to an existing theatrical concept, we’ve been developing a theatrical practice out of the particular capabilities of our instruments and performers.

The result is a project that resists easy categorization. It can be approached as contemporary chamber music, experimental theater, or a form of choreographed sound installation, but none of these descriptions is entirely sufficient.

The title Necessary Music Only also suggests a broader aesthetic position. In an era when performances frequently depend upon elaborate technological spectacle, I’m interested in what can be accomplished with comparatively direct materials: musicians, instruments, movement, light, and the shared experience of a room.

That economy of means doesn’t necessarily imply simplicity. On the contrary, the complexity emerges from the relationships among those elements.

An Evolving Artistic Language

Our three-week engagement at Theater for the New City represents an important stage in the development of Tilted Axes.

Following our previous theatrical presentation, Circle With No Center, in 2025, Necessary Music Only continued our exploration of how a project originally conceived for public spaces might evolve into a sustained form of music theater.

It also raises productive questions about our future. How might more intricate musical passages be integrated with movement? How can the physical arrangement of performers become an increasingly precise compositional tool? And how might these techniques develop into a theatrical language capable of sustaining larger works?

These questions become especially relevant when I consider the future of INFLUX. Its four movements already possess the scale, sophistication, and internal architecture of a substantial concert work. The next challenge will be to discover how that complexity can be translated into movement without compromising the precision that makes the music so compelling.

In this sense, the stationary performances of INFLUX were not merely a practical accommodation for new material. They represented a stage in an artistic process unfolding in public, with the musical foundation established and its theatrical possibilities still to be explored.

One of the ideas I wanted to explore with Necessary Music Only is that the relationship between music and theater need not be hierarchical. The music doesn’t merely support the staging, nor does the staging simply illustrate the score. Both belong to the same artistic proposition.

For Tilted Axes, moving indoors isn’t a retreat from our original mission of taking music out into the world. It’s an expansion of that mission into another kind of space, one in which the familiar boundaries between concert, choreography, and theater can be reconsidered.

If there’s one idea I hope people take away from Necessary Music Only, it’s that music isn’t simply something that happens in a space. Music can organize, animate, and transform that space.

And with INFLUX pointing toward an increasingly ambitious musical and theatrical future, I believe some of the most intriguing possibilities for Tilted Axes still lie ahead.

Tilted Axes: Necessary Music Only was presented September 17–October 4, 2026, at Theater for the New City, Johnson Theater, New York City. Created and directed by Patrick Grant, with music by Grant and Tilted Axes composers, choreography and lighting by Christopher Caines, and technical direction by Elijah Smith, and Olivia Talian stage manager. The production featured performers Gene Ardor, Lori Bingel, John Ferrari, Grace Goss, Patrick Grant, John Halo, Jim Lee, Jeremy Nesse, James Schoen, and Dmitri Shapira. Photography and video were provided by Jocelyn Gonzales and Jack Wang. Produced by Peppergreen Media.

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
Crystal Field, Executive Director, presents

TILTED AXES: NECESSARY MUSIC ONLY
movements for mobile electric guitars

September 17 through October 4, 2026
Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, New York City

NEW YORK, NY — Theater for the New City presents the return of Tilted Axes with Necessary Music Only, an original work of music theater created by composer Patrick Grant that combines mobile electric guitars, live percussion, choreography, lighting, and visual media into a singular theatrical experience. Performances run Thursday, September 17 through Sunday, October 4, 2026.

Returning to Theater for the New City following last season’s production, Tilted Axes: Necessary Music Only transforms the stage into a constantly evolving landscape of sound and movement. Musicians perform while walking through choreographed formations, creating shifting musical textures that blur the boundaries between concert, dance, and theater.

Performance Schedule

Thursdays, September 17, 24 & October 1, 8 pm
Fridays, September 18, 25 & October 2, 8 pm
Saturdays, September 19, 26 & October 3, 8 pm
Sundays, September 20, 27 & October 4, 3 pm

Tickets: $20 General Admission, $15 Students & Seniors
Tickets & Information: www.theaterforthenewcity.net • (212) 254-1109

Produced by: Peppergreen Media
Directed by: Patrick Grant
Music by: Patrick Grant and Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars composers
Choreography & Lights by: Christopher Caines
Technical Direction by: Elijah Smith
Performed by: Gene Ardor, Lori Bingel, John Ferrari, Grace Goss, Patrick Grant, John Halo, Igor Icaza, Jim Lee, Jeremy Nesse, James Schoen, and Dmitri Shapira
Photos & Video by: Jocelyn Gonzales and Jack Wang

More information: http://www.tiltedaxes.com • @tiltedaxes • #tiltedaxes

Created by composer and artistic director Patrick Grant, Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is an ensemble of electric guitarists and percussionists that transforms streets, parks, galleries, museums, and theaters into immersive musical environments. Performing untethered with battery-powered amplifiers, the musicians invite audiences into an experience where music is living, physical, and shared. Moving continuously through the performance space, they create an environment that is at once ritual, procession, and music theater.

Now in its sixteenth season, Tilted Axes continues to bring contemporary music into public life through movement, community, and shared experience.

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/Tilted2025

Dear friends, please consider being a part of our 15th season team!

Your support will go toward our fall season of premieres, recorded releases, and FREE performances.

Join our team this season at the link above and be a part of the new music.

Thank you! — #TiltedAxes

NEWS: http://www.tiltedxes.com

On Saturday and Sunday, July 19 & 20, Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars took the North Lawn of the Detroit Institute of Arts at around 7:30 pm for their Detroit premiere. The following day at 6 pm, they returned as part of a second procession. Both performances were part of the festival’s free outdoor lineup.

From the first step onto the lush museum grounds, the ensemble’s processional format—a dozen-plus electric guitarists wearing portable mini-amps and backed by percussionists—redefined ambient performance. Rather than anchored in one static stage spot, the group moved en masse throughout the lawn, weaving soundscapes into the evening air, activating the environment as their stage.

Tilted Axes stood out visually as a kinetic ensemble. Each guitarist wore a shoulder‑strapped mini‑amp, creating a blend of function and performance art as they navigated the lawn in choreographed procession. The movement was fluid, organic, and ritual-like—simultaneously theatrical and seamlessly integrated into the festival’s open space ethos.

Their setup felt democratic: no spotlight hoggers, just a collective flow of musicians and rhythm. The ensemble, led by composer‑director Patrick Grant, included guest premieres from Elisa Corona Aguilar, Sarah Metivier, Angela Babin, and Maggie McCabe—a clear nod toward geographic and creative diversity. The group’s choreography was created by Christopher Caines.

The sonic terrain Tilted Axes traversed on both evenings was rich, layered, and exploratory. Their set included Detroit premieres—including work by McCabe—and world premieres by Babin and others, weaving local and global voices into the sonic architecture.

Musically, they blurred boundaries between ambient, post‑rock, and ritualistic drone. The guitars wove in melodic gestures and atmospheric washes, anchored by percussion and bass. The procession’s multi-instrument choreography allowed for shifts in dynamics, creating peaks of intensity and moments of hush, giving the audience a breathing, immersive sound journey.

While existing studio recordings showcase their tight compositional vision, the live ensemble offered a more spatial and ritual context—music as landscape, not just song. It felt both meditative and propulsive—at times cosmic, at others tactile.

Audiences gathered around, moving with the procession, often walking alongside or pausing as the ensemble passed. The experience fostered a community dynamic: spectators became part of the performance, moving through the sound art in real time.

In Detroit—a city known for carrying musical legacy forward—the combination of premieres by local Detroit composer McCabe and others provided a resonant sense of place. It reflected the festival’s ethos: global voices speaking through a locally rooted musical event.

If there was a single minor caveat, it’s that the mobile format occasionally made it hard for all attendees to hear the full balance of instruments—depending on where you stood. Those “off-axis” might occasionally lose sonic detail.

Tilted Axes at the Concert of Colors on July 19–20, 2025 reimagined what outdoor performance can be. Drawing on ritual, movement, and electric energy, the ensemble turned the DIA lawns into a walking concert hall. The premieres—both local and global—felt fresh and purposeful. Visually striking and sonically compelling, Tilted Axes offered Detroit audiences an experimental, communal, and deeply musical experience that stayed with you long after the amps were turned off.

— Brenda Tipton

Note: On 7/19 Tilted Axes opened for the band Yo Lo Tengo and on 7/20 they opened for the legendary 70s band WAR. Full schedule of events at Concert of Colors.

https://tinyurl.com/TiltedNewYorker

Tilted Axes Reels! — Watch videos of our recent performances and more on Instagram HERE!

#tiltedaxes #strawberryfields #newyork Strawberry Tilts Forever — @tiltedaxes: Strawberry Solstice, @makemusicny, June 21, 2024, @makemusicday #tiltedaxes Make Music New York 2024 Strawberry Fields Forever — Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars We would like to thank the @puffinculturalforum for making this performance possible. @nyscouncilonthearts #strawberryfields#newyork#nyc#johnlennon#beatles#thebeatles#electricguitar#music#rock#performance#classic#classical#centralpark

Tilted Axes: Strawberry Solstice

music for mobile electric guitars

June 21st, 12 noon to 2pm — Richard Tucker Park, NYC

MAKE MUSIC NEW YORK 2024 — FREE PERFORMANCE!

It’s a musical procession for the first day of summer and the full strawberry moon.

We begin and end at Richard Tucker Park, W 66th Street and Broadway. The event is a foray into the neighborhood with stops at places of interest.

Tilted Axes perform exciting original compositions and a couple of unique arrangements of seasonal tunes, sonic structures comprised of burbling polyrhythms, and contemplative grooves for deep listeners. They will premiere a new piece, “Strawberry Solstice” and well as some surprises, it’s a tilted tradition.

Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is an ensemble created and led by composer Patrick Grant.The project takes on aspects of spectacle informed by the traditions of urban street bands, avant-garde theater, and ancient music. It takes music out into the world and seeks transformative situations meant to change the conversation.

Electric Guitars: Gene Ardor, Jessica Dankowitz, Patrick Grant (director), John Halo, Liz Hogg, Howie Kenty, Diego Retana, Dmitri Shapira — Keytar: Dean Olsher — Electric Bass: Jeremy Nesse, Kevin Pfeiffer, Sarah Metivier Schadt — Percussion: Vince Caiafa, Roxan Jurkevich — Choreography: Christopher Caines — Production Support: Alex Lahoski, Keith Steimel, Leslie Stevens — Media Producer: Jocelyn Gonzales

Tilted Axes is a project of Peppergreen Media andis powered by Vox Amplification courtesy of KORG USA. We thank our performance partners Make Music New York, Strange Music Inc., Astor Place Hair Stylists, Sunlight Studios, and PianoPiano NYC.

Taking New Music Out Into The World — The 12th season of Tilted Axes is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Governor and the NY State Legislature, the ASCAP Plus+ Awards, and NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

http://www.tiltedaxes.com @tiltedaxes #tiltedaxes

We’d like to thank The Puffin Foundation for their support of this project.

I’m happy that this film with my musical score will be presented in June at the Gulf of Naples Film Festival in Italy. Bravi tutti! Grazie! — PG

Daniel Rothbart writes: “I feel honored and delighted that “The Canto of Ulysses (for Primo Levi),” a short film that I realized with Carlo Giuliano is an Official Selection of the Gulf of Naples Independent Film Festival in Naples, Italy! The 10th Edition of this festival will take place from June 11-14, 2024, at the Istituto Pontano (Palazzo Cariati). Thanks to Umberto Santacroce and Vittorio Adinolfi.

The film features a new Arabic translation of Dante’s “Canto of Ulysses” by Marwa Saabni and music by Patrick Grant. It was previously screened at the Pool of the Arches / Center for Contemporary Art Ramle CACR in Ramle, Israel, and at the Lambert Center for Art + Ideas, JCC Manhattan in New York City.”

***

“The Canto of Ulysses (for Primo Levi)” is a surreal, aqueous voyage that juxtaposes Carlo Giuliano’s reading of Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno with imagery of Daniel Rothbart’s floating sculptural installations in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Dante’s Canto 26 recounts the story of Ulysses who, once returned to Ithaca, rallies his former shipmates for one last voyage to the end of the world. Within sight of his destination, Ulysses’ ship is caught in a whirlpool and carried to the bottom of the sea. Thereafter, Ulysses inhabits the eighth circle of hell, where he is punished for deceiving Greeks with the Trojan Horse. 

Jorge Luis Borges likens Ulysses to Dante himself, who pushes boundaries of the Italian language. ‘If This Is a Man,’ Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir, includes a chapter titled “The Canto of Ulysses.” Levi recites the canto in his mind to keep hold of his sanity in the camp. Levi unsuccessfully tries to convey a sense of its meaning and poetry to Jean, a friend and fellow prisoner.

https://www.gulfofnaplesfilmfestival.com/

@gulfofnaplesfilmfestival1 @galerie.depardieu @cr10arts @cacr_ramla @ron__peled @marwasaabni @udiurm @mm_jccmanhattan @umbertosantacroce @vittorio.adinolfi.7 #danielrothbart #galeriedepardieu #carlogiuliano #marwasaabni #contemporaryart #francinehuntermcgivern #kineticsculpture #primolevi #ifthisisaman #cacr #ramle #sequestoeunuomo #auschwitz #dante #inferno #ulysses #cantodiulisse #ulisse #sculpturecinetique #sculturacinetica #naples #napoli #francinehuntermcgivern #contemporaryart #gulfofnaplesfilmfestival #gulfofnaplesindependentfilmfestival #poetryfilm

TILTED AXES:

music for mobile electric guitars

Lower East Side Festival of the Arts 2024

presented by Theater for the New City

155 1st Avenue, New York City 10003

http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net

Sunday, May 26 at 6:00 pm in the Johnson Theater

FREE!   FREE!   FREE!   FREE!   FREE!

TILTED AXES: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is an ensemble created in 2011 and led by composer Patrick Grant.Now in its 12th season, the project takes on aspects of spectacle informed by the traditions of urban street bands, avant-garde theater, and ancient music. It takes music out into the world and seeks transformative situations meant to change the conversation.

Electric Guitars: Gene Ardor (stage manager), Jessica Dankowitz, Patrick Grant (director), Howie Kenty — Keytar: Dean Olsher — Electric Bass: Jeremy Nesse, Kevin Pfeiffer — Percussion: John Ferrari, Roxan Jurkevich— Choreography: Christopher Caines — Media Producer: Jocelyn Gonzales — Photo: Bob Krasner @bobkrasner @bobkrasnertoo

Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is a project of Peppergreen Media andis powered by Vox Amplification courtesy of KORG USA. We thank our performance partners Theater for the New City, Make Music New York, Strange Music Inc., and Funkadelic Studios.

Taking New Music Out Into The World — The 12th season of Tilted Axes is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Governor and the NY State Legislature, the ASCAP Plus+ Awards, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, but mostly through the generous support of you the public through our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas.

Thank you Crystal Field and all the good people at Theater for the New City!

http://www.tiltedaxes.com @tiltedaxes #tiltedaxes