Carry On is a multi-year improvisatory collaboration between percussionist Joe Sorbara (Canada), pianist Matthias Mainz (Germany), and interdisciplinarist angela Snæfellsjökuls rawlings (Iceland). Working through sound, poetics, and ecosystems, their collaboration is contingent on attunement with planetary boundary tipping points, which govern their wellnesses, locations, travel potential, sociolegal realities, and politicised bodies. The trio explores the meeting-space between human and non-human time-conceptions which may activate a tempoception sense-ability within musicmaking-as-relations-as-communication.

Listening¹ is fundamental to this moment of survivorship². To listen is to sustain is to be in relation. As improvisers, the trio approaches every moment as though it may be the final one. This imbues each gesture with an intensified listening as we anticipate any potential end as a community. Sounding together in this way also embues each collective decision to continue with heightened intensity, continuously transforming each subsequent possibility for ending into a middle, into a beginning open to the next possible end.

Survival requires an artistic praxis propelled by ecocentric ethics. Carry On does not work with AI³ because it exploits intellectual property and is a water-intensive process causing imbalance within ecosystems globally. Instead, the trio advocates for and practices analog, acoustic methods for their creations, performances, and knowledge-sharings.

How to Carry On is always a question. What can we do in this space, with this time, with these constraints, and in relation with these human/non-human bodies? Each encounter of Carry On inscribes a chapter. Becomes a pulse. A finger on the pulse of a moment in time, a moment indeterminate in length.

In April 2025, the trio met in Iceland for Carry On’s initial exploratory phase. A volcano erupted, literally. Harmonic tremor, óróapuls. As part of this phase, the three developed a working method of improvised musicmaking, conversation, and road trips to see sites that remained obscured by thick fog. They gave a performance-lecture at Iceland University of the Arts, inviting faculty and students to join their musicmaking and conversation.

In November 2025, Carry On continued their collaboratory through a series of public events in Germany activating rawlings’ newly producted Motion to Chill. These included a workshop with UNESCO Chair in Digital Culture and Arts in Education at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, a performance at Kulturwerkstadt in Nürnberg, and a performance at exploratorium berlin.

In October 2025, the trio reconvenes in Germany for events in Berlin, Darmstadt, and Köln.

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¹ “Listening is survival.” — Pauline Oliveros
² “Survival is contingent on solidarity.” — Yerba Mala Collective
³ “It’s not on the Internet.” — Mette Moestrup