Unforeseen: Improvising Life And Music

Cellist and composer Justyna Jablonska presents Unforeseen: Improvising Life and Music, a new 60-minute multimedia performance that blends virtuosic cello improvisation with live electronics, loops, field recordings, film, and spoken word. At the heart of the work is a simple but powerful idea: that the act of improvising in music mirrors the improvisations people make in their lives. Drawing on conversations and field recordings with immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, and other parts of Eastern Europe, Jablonska explores how memory, music, and identity travel across borders. Fragments of remembered songs, voices, and everyday soundscapes become part of the musical texture, layered with live cello and electronics to create a richly polyphonic sound world. Songs and familiar melodies weave through the performance, while accompanying film and spoken word deepen the narrative dimension of the work. The result is an intimate and immersive performance that reflects on migration, belonging, and the ways music can hold and transform memory. Personal and collective histories intertwine as Jablonska traces connections between her own experience of migration and those of the people whose voices shape the piece. Unforeseen: Improvising Life and Music represents an important step in Jablonska’s artistic development, marking a move beyond interpretation toward the creation of original interdisciplinary work that bridges music, storytelling, and documentary sound.