tombstar: eddy kwon (violin), Isabel Crespo Pardo (voice), Zekkereya El-magharbel (trombone), Lesley Mok (drums)

In collaboration with cellist-composer Aliya Ultan and aerialists Teddy Ment, Eleanor Getz, and Copper Santiago, a bird in its chest is a reflection on love: young, unrequited, unconditional, enduring, and self-love. Shaped by ideas of supernatural grace, phantom wishes, ephemeral passions, and crazed disillusionment, this collaboration has emerged out of a desire to understand the expansiveness of love beyond its familiar expressions.

A string quartet inspired by light and shadow play.

Subject: Holly Lai & Estelle Crouch | Music: Lesley Mok & Tomeka Reid | Cinematography, Direction, Concept: Lesley Mok and Tomeka Reid | Editing & Mixing: Lesley Mok November 21, 2020 | Commissioned by Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (Summer Solstice 2020 Cohort) with support from Joseph and Nancy Walker

she smashed the enclosure is the imagined story of the Gwai Ying, a Chinese woman who was brought to the U.S. from China in 1933. Her story is told through a series of visions in which angels and devils fight for truth in her mind, producing wild and manic dreams.

Penumbra is the first album by Jake Henry, Sebastien Ammann, Matthias Pichler, and Lesley Mok. Recorded in the days leading up to the COVID-19 shut down in New York City, this album remains a bittersweet documentation of friends crossing paths on the precipice of a changing world.

To propagate is to breed specimens of an organism from a parent stock. This three-movement piece re-contextualizes the Chinese Souna and personifies the instrument in a new light. Like many sonic bridges that are built between the East and West, Propagate is my interpretation of the many ways in which our shared musical and cultural histories continue to take shape.

A recorded improvisation with Eli Wallace and Michael Foster.