In Conversation: Jad Abumrad and Paola Prestini
Co-Presented with Fusebox Festival
Join The Contemporary Austin and Fusebox for an intimate conversation with celebrated artists and storytellers Jad Abumrad and Paola Prestini. The pair will discuss their collaborative work Por(tal), which premiered at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in May 2025 and was also presented at PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance in June 2025.
Functioning as a "musical séance," Por(tal) is a site-specific choral theater work that reawakens the ghosts of the Brooklyn Navy Yard—a place steeped in history as the center of America's war-making effort, and an engine for social progress.
A gateway between the echoes of the past and dreams for the future, the work is a meditation on the contradictory histories a single geographic point can hold. Through a blend of Prestini's expansive compositions and Abumrad's signature sonic storytelling, Por(tal) navigates the currents of time, weaving together the oral histories of early shipbuilders, civil rights activists, and wartime laborers through the contemporary voices of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
In this rare opportunity to hear directly from the creators, go behind-the-scenes with firsthand insights into the evocative visual and auditory artifacts that reveal the project's evolution—including raw, atmospheric video tracking performers through the industrial Agger Fish building, "graphic scores," historical maps, and handwritten libretto notes that map the emotional arc of the Navy Yard's legacy.
By stripping away the theatrical artifice, Prestini and Abumrad invite audience to witness the vulnerability of two creators attempting to build a bridge across generations and time, to make sense of a world in constant flux.
Event Schedule:
12P Museum doors open and seating begins
12:30–1:30P Conversation with Abumrad and Prestini
1:30–2P Social forum
For accommodation needs, please contact [email protected]
About the Panelists
Composer/artist/journalist Jad Abumrad is the creator of Radiolab, Dolly Parton’s America, Fela Kuti: Fear No Man and many other podcasts which collectively have been downloaded over a billion times. He's been called a "master of the radio craft" for his unique ability to combine cutting edge sound-design, cinematic storytelling and a personal approach to explaining complex topics, from the stochasticity of tumor cells to the mathematics of morality. Jad studied creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. He composed much of the music for Radiolab, and has composed music for film, theater and dance. Jad has received three Peabody Awards, the highest honor in broadcasting and two DuPont Awards. And in 2011, he received the prestigious MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. He’s currently a Distinguished Professor of Research at Vanderbilt University.
Paola Prestini is a renowned composer and co-founder of National Sawdust in NYC and arts production company, VisionIntoArt. Prestini was a recipient of a 2025 Creative Capital Award, a composer-in-residence at the American Academy of Rome, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and has been named one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music by the Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. At National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries like poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass, and Renée Fleming, and her works have been performed throughout the world with leading institutions like the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Dallas Opera, London's Barbican Center, Mexico's Bellas Artes, and many more. Prestini's 2025-26 season includes a site-specific production of her multidisciplinary work Houses of Zodiac in the Catacombs of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, lauded by Strings Magazine as "one of the greatest and most ambitious solo cello albums of all time." The season also includes the Mexico premiere and album release of her acclaimed processional opera Primero Sueño; an operatic re-imagining of Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea at the Wexner Center for the Arts (in a co-production by Opera Columbus and Beth Morrison Projects); and two symphonic world premieres: a co-commission by the Tucson Symphony and a commission by the The Juilliard School, and a performance by Awadagin Pratt and the Dayton Philharmonic of her piano concerto Code.
This event is programmed in partnership with Fusebox and in conjunction with Fusebox Festival 2026, a biannual city-wide initiative bringing artists from across the world to Austin for live performances, installations, conversations, workshops, and gatherings. Learn more at https://fuseboxlive.com/
