Ars Nova Workshop presents the Norwegian / Swedish quintet Friends & Neighbors, at Solar Myth on December 3, 2025.

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Ars Nova Workshop

Solar Myth

Friends & Neighbors

Gigs

Philadelphia

Ars Nova Workshop is thrilled to present two of the most creative and captivating voices in modern jazz, pianist/keyboardist Matt Mitchell and vocalist Sara Serpa, at Solar Myth on Thursday, December 4.

Matt Mitchell / Sara Serpa

Please join Ars Nova Workshop for the Philadelphia premiere of the Saccata Quartet, a new supergroup including members of Wilco, at Solar Myth on Friday, December 5, 2025.

Saccata Quartet is a supergroup featuring guitar explorer **Nels Cline** (Wilco, CUP with Yuka C. Honda, his own Consentrik Quartet); percussionist **Glenn Kotche** (Wilco as well as myriad recordings by everyone from John Luther Adams to Taylor Swift); drummer **Chris Corsano** (a collaborator with countless free improvisers including Joe McPhee and Bill Orcutt); and bassist **Darin Gray** (touring bassist for Tweedy and Jim O’Rourke’s longtime bassist of choice). While Saccata Quartet's music could probably well be called free jazz, drone, dark ambient, post-noise or kosmische-noir, it should not be labeled too rigorously under any one of those banners. As a work of four lauded instrumentalists, their sound, be it loud and undeniably wall-like or hazy and quiet, almost fog-like, comes from a place of democratic free expression of four musicians coming together on their own terms. Monolith Cocktail called them “a harrowing and galloping, scattering merger of Faust, Roscoe Mitchell, Sam Rivers, Zappa and AEOC in a dense experimental world of scares and uncertainty.”

Saccata Quartet

Ars Nova Workshop presents the gifted trumpeter Peter Evans, a master of extended technique , and his new quartet Being & Becoming, featuring master drummer Tyshawn Sorey, for a two-night residency at Solar Myth, December 6-7.

Peter Evans' Being and Becoming

Ars Nova Workshop presents the innovative, boundary-pushing band Kneebody at Solar Myth on Wednesday, December 10, 2025.

Kneebody 

Ars Nova Workshop presents the Los Angeles-based supergroup SML, featuring luminaries from the city’s jazz, improv, and indie music scenes, at Solar Myth, December 11, 2025.

Please join Ars Nova Workshop for the return of Bitchin Bajas at Solar Myth on December 12, 2025, in celebration of their forthcoming LP, Inland See, out via Drag City.

The new album from Bitchin Bajas — the acclaimed trio of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, and Daniel Quinlivan — arrives September 26, marking their first full-length since 2022’s Bajascillators. Composed primarily on the road and recorded at Chicago’s Electrical Audio, Inland See presents four expansive tracks that form a cohesive sonic statement: elemental, immersive, and deeply transportive. The lead single “Skylarking,” accompanied by a visualizer by longtime collaborator Nick Ciontea, offers an early glimpse into the record’s luminous interior world.

As with each Bitchin Bajas release, Inland See is guided by a spirit of discovery — music as revelation, where rhythm and atmosphere intersect in hypnotic equilibrium. On “Skylarking,” tightly looped grooves and global timbres swirl into motion, summoning both ecstatic propulsion and meditative stillness. It’s a space dance with subterranean roots — a composition that, like the album itself, evokes the sensation of buoyancy: held aloft by sound, suspended in time.

Don’t miss this rare live performance, as Bitchin Bajas return to Solar Myth to celebrate a project that reaffirms their singular position at the crossroads of minimalism, kosmische, and spiritual jazz.

Bitchin Bajas

Ars Nova Workshop welcomes the esteemed bassist and composer Dezron Douglas and his Quartet to Solar Myth for a two-night residency, December 17-18.

Dezron Douglas Quartet

Ars Nova Workshop welcomes back the Philly-based saxophonist and composer Bobby Zankel, celebrating his 76th birthday at Solar Myth on December 21, 2025.

Bobby Zankel

Ars Nova Workshop is thrilled to present UB-313, an exploratory new supergroup from Philly by way of the outer limits of the galaxy, at Solar Myth on Saturday, January 3, 2026.

The band features the indefatigable Maestro Marshall Allen, heading inexorably toward his 102nd birthday; the relentlessly inventive saxophonist Elliott Levin; the mind-boggling keyboards of Brian Marsella, a master interpreter of the music of John Zorn; the six-string alchemy of longtime Sun Ra Arkestra guitarist DM Hotep; and the mesmerizing percussion of drummer and Chicago Underground co-founder Chad Taylor. This is a once in a lifetime convergence not to be missed.

UB-313

Ars Nova Workshop presents the trio of turntablist Maria Chávez, bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer Greg Saunier, to Solar Myth on January 8, 2026.

Chávez / Ismaily / Saunier

Ars Nova Workshop presents a performance by the percussionist, composer and instrument maker Bex Burch at Solar Myth on Sunday, January 11, 2026.

Bex Burch

Ars Nova Workshop is excited to present Clone Row, the staggeringly uncategorizable new project from drummer/composer Ches Smith, at Solar Myth on Tuesday, January 13, 2026. The adventurous new quartet features Smith with guitarists Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman and bassist Nick Dunston.

Ches Smith Clone Row

Ars Nova Workshop presents أحمد \[Ahmed\], the exploratory quartet of Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright, Joel Grip, and Antonin Gerbal, at Solar Myth on Monday, September 22, 2025.

أحمد Ahmed

Ars Nova Workshop presents the singular tenor saxophonist Jason Rigby and his trio Mayhem at Solar Myth on Thursday, March 5, 2026.

After nearly a decade away from recording as a leader, saxophonist Jason Rigby made his triumphant return in August 2025 with Mayhem, a groundbreaking duo album featuring renowned drummer Mark Guiliana. The project expands to a trio as it arrives at Solar Myth, adding the eclectic bassist Chris Morrissey to the mix.

Jason Rigby Mayhem w/ Mark Guiliana / Chris Morrissey

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Hailed as “Philadelphia’s most reliable and ambitious presenter of new jazz and improvised music” by The Wire, Ars Nova Workshop has cultivated connection and curiosity through deep listening, improvisation, and joyous creative expression for the last 25 years.

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