Dayton-based Neutrals, formed in 2016 by villager Evan Miller and Andrew Seivert, will open the show. (Submitted photo)
Avant-garde musicians MacKay, Neutrals to play at Herdon
- Published: February 27, 2026
On Saturday, Feb. 28, two acts — Chicago-based guitarist, songwriter and composer Bill MacKay and area experimental percussion duo Neutrals — will take the stage in Herndon Gallery at Antioch College for an avant-garde double bill that promises approaches to sound and structure that, at turns, overlap and diverge.
The News spoke this week with Evan Miller of Dayton-based Neutrals, formed in 2016 by Miller and Andrew Seivert, which will open the show. The duo blends written percussion works with electroacoustic improvisation, drawing from both classical training and underground music scenes, and Miller said the Neutrals looks forward to bringing that sonic tincture of structure and spontaneity to the Herndon.
“Every time we play is a little bit different,” Miller said. “Depending on the room or who’s asked us to play, we might lean more toward chamber music, or something more improvisational — or a little bit of both.”
Neutrals has made a practice of performing established repertoire alongside commissioned works by composers known to the duo. Miller said a number of the composers whose music the duo performs are themselves active improvisers, instrument builders or experimental performers.
“We seem to gravitate toward people who live in both worlds,” Miller said, estimating that more than half of the chamber works Neutrals has performed were pieces commissioned directly for the duo, often beginning as friendships and conversations that eventually turned into formal projects.
“Some of the pieces we’ve played forced us to make sounds we never would have thought of on our own,” Miller said. “And then those sounds get folded back into how we improvise later.”
One work the duo expects to perform on Feb. 28 is “Settle,” by composer Sarah Hennies, a piece built around sustained tones and gradual shifts in volume and resonance via vibraphone.
“It’s really just one chord for about 12 minutes,” Miller said. “But the speed you play it, and how it sounds, depends entirely on the room.”
In that piece, Miller said, the space becomes part of the performance as sound interacts with the dimensions of the room, the surfaces, the reverberation.
“Every space is different,” Miller said. “You start to hear what the room is doing back to you.”
To that point, Neutrals performed “Settle” last year in the former community gathering space on Short Street, where he said the vibraphone’s tones “dissipated in a different way” than they would in a room.
Miller described Herndon Gallery as intimate but “alive,” where subtle changes in intonation or resonance can register more apparently than they might in a more “dry” space. Having performed in spaces as varied as living rooms and basements, traditional stages and dive bars, Miller said Neutrals is accustomed to adjusting the way they play to the space they inhabit.
“We know how to play to the room,” he said. “It won’t feel like we’re under a microscope.”
Though both Neutrals and Bill MacKay move within the avant-garde, their sounds don’t share an immediately apparent surface language, but both, in their own ways, move fluidly between structure and openness. For MacKay, who spoke with the News earlier this month, that’s an ideal lineup.
“I really like when bills are overlapped, maybe, in some ways, but our bags are quite different as well,” he said.
Based in Chicago, MacKay has built a career that balances solo works with a wide range of collaborations. He’s released several solo albums on Drag City Records, most recently “Locust Land.” Alongside his solo releases, he has ongoing collaborative projects in Chicago, including BCMC with organist Cooper Crain of psychedelic drone outfit Cave and Chicago supergroup Black Duck with Douglas McCombs and Charles Rumback.
Still, MacKay said his solo practice has remained a constant, and in recent years, he’s brought vocals back into the mix, which he called a “nice change.”
“To me, it’s all instruments,” he said. “But that’s a particular instrument — the voice — that hits a lot of people in different ways. It’s widened the vocabulary of my solo work.”
By way of example: MacKay’s 2021 EP “Scarf” is a 22-minute guitar track that layers bright, distorted notes over a persistent drone before shifting midway to contemplative tones, then lilting melodic lines that melt into swelling chords and return, resolved, to somewhere near where the piece began. Conversely, 2024’s LP “Locust Land” is a generous mixture of instrumental and lyrical tunes. The album’s tracks flow between rock-and-roll-adjacent jams and singer-songwriter sensibilities, book-ended by brief, diaphanous works that fit neither category.
His listening vocabulary, too, is broad, he said, extending into what he called “two wings” — one that returns to familiar music for comfort, and another that keeps reaching in uncharted directions.
“I’m very thirsty for new sounds,” he said, “whether it’s new or old music, but music that’s new to me … experimental, going in directions that I’m not so familiar with.”
MacKay said he grew up in a “family that had pretty wide listening habits,” and started writing songs very early after picking up guitar. Thus, he said, he never developed a hard mental barrier between composition and improvisation. To his mind, they share a source: A composition, in performance, becomes “the blueprint of a ritual,” while improvisation is “a fresh assembly” of familiar instincts into something new.
“In a way, songs are improvisations that are repeated,” he said. “Generally, I don’t leave a ton of room for all-out free improv [in performances]; usually it’s in the context of a song, or maybe some free things that are more like intros and interludes.”
He also described the work of shaping a live set as its own kind of composition, and something he considers as carefully as he thinks about album sequencing.
“I’ll put a set together in the same way,” he said. “Being kind of a hybridist artist, I always try to think carefully about hitting the different points of this song vocabulary … and think of songs that will cover some ground.”
That instinct toward shape and pacing, he said, sometimes draws him to unconventional rooms and curator-led series. Though he has never played in Yellow Springs, he said he was drawn to the local show through the feel of the season series itself.
“I like to do things that are special,” MacKay said. “Within touring, there’s a range of very standard places you end up playing — it’s just part of the gig. But when a series looks unique and fun to do … that makes all the difference.”
Miller expressed a similar sentiment: that Yellow Springs has room for unique, varied kinds of listening experiences, and venues that can hold them.
“I hope this show continues to reinforce with people in the community that this is a place that is welcoming to these kinds of sounds, and a community that is fostering it,” he said.
Bill MacKay and Neutrals will perform Saturday, Feb. 28, 7–9 p.m., in Herndon Gallery at Antioch College. Parking is available in the lot behind the Wellness Center and Olive Kettering Library, with on-street parking on Livermore Street. An accessible passenger drop-off and pick-up area is available via Morgan Place off Livermore.
Tickets are $20 for general admission and $5 for students, and may be purchased in advance online at http://www.bit.ly/MacKayNeutralsHerndon
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