Tromboline and Friends

The new music duo Tromboline, featuring trombonist Gregory Erickson and  violinist Masha Lankovsky, presents an evening of bold, experimental performance that reimagines what classical chamber music can be. Blending music, sound, speech, and even magic, the program pushes at the edges of tradition.

The concert features world premieres, including a work by Gallatin alum Leo Yablans honoring the voices of the Minneapolis resistance, and an interactive piece inspired by the New York City transportation system by Hannah Cai Sobel. In a genre-defying highlight, Gallatin student Theo Chattra joins the duo for what may be the first-ever collaboration for violin, trombone, and magician.

Founded in 2022, Tromboline has premiered more than a dozen experimental works in Paris, Besançon, and New York City.

Gregory Erickson is a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at New York University’s Gallatin School, where he teaches courses on music, modern literature, popular culture, and religion. He is the author of The Absence of God in Modernist Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Christian Heresy, James Joyce, and the Modernist Literary Imagination: Reinventing the Word (Bloomsbury 2022), and Speculative Television and the Doing and Undoing of Religion (Routledge 2023).  As a trombonist he is the principal trombonist of the Bronx Opera Orchestra and a member of numerous chamber and new music ensembles including the Thermophily Trio and Tromboline. He has performed across the United States and Europe and is featured on multiple recordings.

Masha Lankovsky is a professor at the Versailles Conservatory in France and co-artistic director of the Shkolnikova Academy. As a violinist she has appeared in international festivals such as Schleswig Holstein (Germany), Britten Pears festival (England), the American Conservatoire in Fontainebleau (France) and she has been awarded multiple residencies at the Banff Centre (Canada). She was the violinist in the neoLIT chamber ensemble for many years and introduced many new works by female composers. Her recording “Russian Dreams,” with pianist Byron Schenkman was released on the Centaur label and features rarely heard compositions by Taneyev, Roslavets, Medtner, Prokofiev, and Scriabin. Masha has written articles for The Strad magazine and her English translation and edition of the writings of the renowned pedagogue Yuri Yankelevich is published by Oxford University Press.