HAVANA DIALECTIC is an ambient musical performance by artist Ashla Chavez-Razzano, inspired by the urban soundscapes of Los Angeles, California, and Havana, Cuba. The performance abstracts urban and natural environments local to the two cities as a way of reconciling places of exile and expansion. Three musicians—upright bassist Tate Chavez, percussionist Zach Gotler, and wind player Collin McCrary—will perform alongside ambient sound composition and experimental cinema vérité by Chavez-Razzano. Their organic, meditative swelling of improvisation will complement the ever-changing visual collages of urban life in Los Angeles and Havana. Through found sound, video, poetry, and live musical improvisation, the piece explores new forms of the philosophical “dialectic”: between musician and field recordings; between contrasting urban landscapes; between ideals of advancement and realities of decline.

This performance inaugurates the 2026 season of the Wende Museum’s experimental music series FRAMEWORKS. This season, each featured artist will develop an interdisciplinary performance considering both domestic and public spaces as they relate to the artist’s singular perspective. Each artist will reflect on the subtle implications of space, as functional and measurable records of cities or cultures; versus place, the conceptual and felt imaginings of the familiar or alien. Embodying the Wende’s ethos of promoting research into dynamic global networks and processes of transformation through an experimental lens, the series’ bimonthly, site-specific performances examine the “frameworks” through which we narrate the past and imagine the future; they complement the Museum’s exhibitions and programs while simultaneously acting as channels to contemporary scenes alive in Los Angeles.

Ashla Chavez-Razzano is a Los Angeles–based writer, musician, and curatorial consultant whose work traces the emotional and social possibilities of sound. Moving between writing, music, radio, and performance, her practice is rooted in storytelling through experimentation and active listening. In 2024, Ashla debuted her sound-art at STADTWERKSTATT in Berlin. Since 2023, she has been the artistic director of art-folk band Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit. As resident DJ of radio stations DUBLAB and KTPC 99.1 FM in Venice, Ashla has utilized the medium of sound as a method of connection, whether in person or on the air. Her writing has been recognized in Poets & Writers Magazine, SPIN Magazine, and Dream Boy Book Club.