The Extinction Series

“The crucial factor in the life and death of species is the amount of suitable habitat left to them.”

— E.O. Wilson

THE EXTINCTION SERIES is an ongoing collection of musical obituaries: brief works written in memory of animals that have vanished from the earth. Begun in 2014, each piece bears a name and a date — the moment a species slipped out of the human record.

The project is, by design, unfinished. It cannot be completed in the composer’s lifetime.

This season offers ten performances in unconventional spaces where man and nature intersect: five concerts for solo piano, five concerts for solo violin, and three events incorporating choreography. Across these settings, the instruments become fragile archives — bodies of wood, string, hammer, breath, pressure, and resonance carrying names forward, one at a time.

Some of these species disappeared centuries ago through hunting and extraction; others vanished within living memory through habitat loss, climate disruption, and the slow violence of environmental change. These works ask us to listen not only for what is present, but for what has already fallen silent.

Each piece is brief. Each name is spoken once. The music does not attempt to recreate these animals — it marks their absence, before the sound disappears too.

Artist Bios

Jordan Morley | Choreography

Jordan Morley is a Brooklyn-based dance artist and choreographer whose work moves through dance, puppetry, video, text, and performance. A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, Morley has presented work at REDCAT, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, Dixon Place, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and Uferstudios in Berlin. His performance credits include work with Mica Bernas, Mira Kingsley, Ben Kamino, and special projects with Ohad Naharin/Ensemble Batsheva, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Alex Ketley, and Danièle Desnoyers. His practice treats the body as a site of imagination, transformation, and strange intelligence.

Adam von Housen | Violin

Adam von Housen is a New York City–based violinist whose work spans solo, chamber, orchestral, and interdisciplinary performance. A winner of the 2013 American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition, he made his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Von Housen received his Master’s Degree and Artist Diploma from the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, where he studied violin with Masao Kawasaki and chamber music with Ursula Oppens and Adam Kent. He has performed widely across New York and beyond, bringing a vivid, intimate musical presence to contemporary and classical repertoire.

Andrea Christie | Piano

Andrea Christie is a Canadian-American pianist known for her versatility as a soloist, chamber musician, and interpreter of contemporary music. A native of Victoria, British Columbia, she began piano at age four and made her orchestral debut at fourteen performing Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. Christie is the pianist of the New York–based Parhelion Trio, a flute-clarinet-piano ensemble praised by New York Concert Review and The Strad. Her playing moves fluently between late-Romantic intensity and new music, making her an ideal interpreter for works that ask the piano to become both instrument and witness.

10 performances · Solo piano · Solo violin · choreography