Caudal de Vientos: Breath as Current

A closing performance with Jay Rodriguez and Genji Siraisi
Friday, August 14, 2026 at 6 PM
601Artspace, 88 Eldridge Street, NYC

Please join us next at 601Artspace on the final weekend of Leonel Vásquez's site-specific installation, Como Volverse Caudal (How to Become a Stream) for a performance of Caudal de Vientos: Breath as Current.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Jay Rodriguez and composer, percussionist, and producer Genji Siraisi will activate Vásquez's work through a live performance that brings breath, water, and resonance into dialogue. Drawing on a wide range of wind instruments—including Colombian gaitas, shakuhachi, ney, bansuri, bass clarinet, and African mbiras, kalimbas, and sansas—the artists will engage with Vásquez's amphibian instruments as equal collaborators. Together, they will create an evolving soundscape where rivers, air, memory, and ancestral lineages converge, inviting the audience to experience listening as a shared practice across cultures, species, and
landscapes.

The event will begin with a screening of a short audiovisual essay directed by Leonel Vàsquez about the Bogotá River, exploring water as memory, sound, and living matter. Vàsquez invites us to listen to the river as we would a living being whose voice persists despite centuries of environmental degradation.

About the Artists

Jay Rodriguez (Hernán Ramiro Rodríguez-Sierra) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and sound designer whose work spans jazz, experimental music, and global musical traditions. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, at the mouth of the Magdalena River, Rodriguez performs on an expansive family of wind instruments, including Colombian gaitas, flauta de millo, Egyptian kawala, Arabic ney, Japanese shakuhachi, Hindi bansuri, bass clarinet, flute, and electronic wind controller. A co-founder of Groove Collective, he has collaborated with artists including Elvis Costello, Ray Barretto, Guru, DJ Premier, the Gil Evans Band, Wu-Tang Clan, Chucho Valdés, Prince, Celia Cruz, Marc Ribot, and Fred Wesley. A Grammy-nominated artist, he is also the founder and Artistic Director of Sound System Culture, a nonprofit dedicated to activating communities through immersive performance, education, and multimedia storytelling.

Genji Siraisi is a composer, drummer, percussionist, and producer whose practice explores the transformative potential of sound as a bridge between humanity and the natural world. A founding member of Groove Collective and Grammy-nominated musician, Siraisi has performed and recorded with artists including Tupac Shakur, Curtis Mayfield, Pharoah Sanders, Ramsey Lewis, the Last Poets, and Sugar Hill Gang. For this performance, he plays a collection of mbiras, kalimbas, and sansas gathered by his father over several decades. These instruments, carrying both personal and cultural histories, become vessels for memory, repair, and continuity, resonating with the exhibition's meditation on rivers as living archives and sites of renewal.

Image by Flaneurshan.studio