In 2024, during my artist residency at the Center for Performance Research, I began teaching myself the fundamentals of musical composition. With whatever tools I had—tables, cell phones, MIDI instruments, and the ideas that crowded my head—I started building sound. Most of this early work was made on my subway commutes, tracing a decade of living in New York: the hard knocks and broken hearts, the longing and dreams, the rage, lust, and tenderness that come with being a gay man in a city that can be both brutal and embracing.

When Anthony Tran joined the collaboration, the project opened up. His guitar work—restless, searching, eager to break out of the margins—met my own desire to carve a new path in experimental flamenco. Together, we found a shared vocabulary and created a work that mirrors our lived experiences and expands what flamenco can hold.

Night Creatures grew from this process. It is my love letter to the men whose bodies have curled around mine, to my love-hate relationship with New York, and to my constant wrestling match with flamenco. It’s a vespertine meditation on sexuality—from moonrise to sunrise—and on the hunger, yearning, and fear that accompany desire between men. It is also a technical exploration, shaped by my year of learning to compose electronic and MIDI-based music while traveling through the city’s vascular underground.

The piece is rooted in flamenco—its modes, rhythms, gestures, and histories—but I pull it apart to reflect my own experience as a queer, fat-femme boy raised in Miami’s tropical fever dream and now living in the sticky, anxious sprawl of New York. What does it mean to dance House por Bulerías, move to the Fandangos of the L train, or sing Tangos de Bushwick? Night Creatures lives in those questions.