BOP STOP is excited to welcome NYC-based flutist and composer, Elsa Nilsson and her Band of Pulses for an extra special evening off . Tickets for tonight are $20 each in advance, $25 day of show (a $2 per ticket processing fee will be added to your purchase).

Featuring:

• Elsa Nilsson, flute
• Santiago Leibson, piano
• Marty Kenney, bass
• Rodrigo Recabarren, drums

This event will also be livestreamed on BOP STOP's Youtube Channel at showtime. Accessing the stream is free but donations are encouraged and directly support the band.

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Many species use sound to communicate. Elsa Nilsson, Santiago Leibson, Marty Kenney and Rodrigo Recabarren asked themselves; what is the line that makes sound music? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then isn’t music in the ear of the listener? As they listened to words around them they became enchanted with the subtleties in the sounds of voices. It began with Rodrigo playing rhythms along with speeches where he wanted to accentuate the meanings of what was being said. He sent Elsa Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse Of Morning” full of rocks, rivers and trees. Elsa fell in love with the deep musicality present in every sound. She listened and heard echoes of Ornette Coleman in how Maya Angelou ended her phrases. She heard thematic development and musical build in the pitch materials.

Together this band took the time to hear the musical communication in the sounds of Maya Angelou’s words. They play with her voice, enhancing the music that is already there and bringing to light the full depth of her sonic brilliance along with her poetic brilliance.

John Cage heard music in every sound. Groove in a tin can. Humor and art co-existing. This band takes a similar approach to communication. Intentionality does not require a plan, directionality does not imply rigidity. With the wide open space of the music ahead they stand together with their toes over the edge and jump.

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For the past decade, flutist, composer and band leader Elsa Nilsson has explored unlikely connections among tendencies of human nature, contradiction and pluralism and the natural world. The Gothenburg native left Sweden for Seattle in 2005 before settling in Brooklyn in 2010. Her breadth of work engages urgency, high-level improvising and layered, cinematic orchestration; her artistry, an earnest and actionable desire to collaborate with multimodal artists and the changing world around her.

A lifelong scholar, Elsa approaches each new project with curiosity and inquiry. Her openness and refinement have prompted collaboration with Jon Cowherd, Chris Morrissey, Karl Berger, Robert Dick, Jamie Baum, Jessica Lurie, Rodrigo Recabarren, Marty Kenney, Santiago Leibson, Mark Ferber, Sebastian Noelle, Tina Raymond, Emma Dayhuff, the CMS improvisers Orchestra, Vinny Golia, Brad Shepik, Jovino Santos Neto, Chuck Deardorf, Jim Knapp, Bill Frisell through the CMA Performance Plus grant with Dawn Clement and with Ravi Coltrane at Carnegie Hall in May of 2025.

Listeners gravitate to Elsa’s sound for its truthful searching, moment to moment, within its athleticism and lyrical pulse. She has appeared across the U.S. and internationally at Nefertiti Jazz Club and Victoriateatern (Sweden), Winter Jazzfest, Earshot Jazz Festival, Recoleta International Jazz Festival, Mount Hood Jazz Festival, Aarhus Jazz Festival, Nublu Jazz Festival, National Sawdust, Blue Note Jazz Club, Cornelia Street Cafe, 55 Bar, Bar Bayeux, The Owl Music Parlor, Shapeshifter Lab, Roulette, Rockwood Music Hall, and more domestic venues.

Compelled by her desire to better understand and connect with the planet and its inhabitants, Elsa creates ambitious, research-driven projects that have garnered peer acknowledgment and critical praise. Solo leader releases include Atlas Of Sound - Quila Quina (2024), Pulses (2023), Atlas Of Sound - Coast Redwoods (2022), Dark Is Light Is (2021), Hindsight (2020), After Us (2018) and Salt Wind (2017). During her tenure with acclaimed ensemble Esthesis Quartet, Elsa and her fellow artists released three albums, Sound and Fury (Sunnyside 2025), Time Zones (Ears and Eyes 2023) Esthesis Quartet (Orenda records 2022) and received effusive praise from Downbeat, JazzIz and All About Jazz, the former praising their sound as “a jazz multiverse that allows them to do everything everywhere all at once...[leaving] listeners feeling happily exhausted by the final cymbal crash.”

In 2022, Elsa issued the first Atlas of Sound; from the Coast Redwoods, the first in a series of releases inspired by human connection to locations of the natural world. The second release, Quila Quina (2024), received a full page write up in Downbeat in February 2025.

Her work has appeared in DownBeat, Jazzwise, Textura, Bandcamp, Broadway World, JazzIz, All About Jazz, New York Jazz Record, Sound in Review and Hot House Jazz Guide. She’s named Flutist Of The Year in the Downbeat 2025 poll, is the 2018 winner of the National Flute Association’s Jazz Flute Competition, and the recipient of multiple Chamber Music America grants, including a 2022 New Jazz Works grant for Band of Pulses, whose release Pulses features the voice of Dr. Maya Angelou and “explores the intersection between spoken language and Jazz.”

Elsa graduated from Hvitfeldtska gymnasiet in Gothenburg before receiving her bachelor of music from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, followed by her master of music from NYU. She has served as a professor of Rhythmic Analysis and Socially Engaged Artistry at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music since 2020, and led master classes at University of Madison, Kansas University, CCM, Cincinnati Public Schools Jazz Academy, Indiana University and Ann Arbor Arts Clinic. In 2018-20, Elsa served the Women in Jazz Organization (WIJO) as program coordinator for its mentorship program. During the first several months of the pandemic lockdown, she launched and hosted nightly streaming events titled Lattice Concerts.

More at www.elsanilssonmusic.com