Join us for an afternoon of music and conversation with Naima Nefertari (aka Karlsson), visual artist, musician, and granddaughter of artist Moki Cherry and jazz iconoclast Don Cherry. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Living Temple: The World of Moki Cherry. The program opens with a piano duet featuring Naima and Mexico City-based pianist and composer Ana Ruíz. A longtime collaborator of both Don and Moki Cherry, Ruíz arranged for the pair to travel their Organic Music Society workshop to Mexico City in 1977. In 2021, Naima and Ruíz began performing together--carrying forth a multi-generational legacy of music. For the Cherry family, music is more than art; it is a shared language of the household, connecting every room, every collaboration, every generation. In the conversation that follows, Naima reflects on her grandparent's genre-defying practices and how their philosophies continue to shape her own work across sound, image, and improvisation. She is joined by acclaimed filmmaker, Ephraim Asili, who has worked closely with the Cherry family estate on an in-progress documentary Don and Moki: Organic Music Society. Together, the discussion weaves through family history, artistic inheritance, and the stewardship of a legacy that is still very much alive. EVENT SCHEDULE 1:30P Rooftop & Seating opens 2:15-3P Piano Duet with Nefertari & Ruíz 3:15-4P Conversation About the panelists/performers Naima Karlsson (b.1982) aka Naima Nefertari is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and composer based in London and Sweden. Her practice interweaves sonic and visual forms led by interests in repetition, improvisation, and relationships between language, image, symbol and sound. Naima's main instrument is the piano, as well as percussion, vibraphone, and electric organ. Improvisation is at the core of the artist's musical process, combined with an inherently organic approach to playing - calling on concepts of Organic Music proposed independently by two major influences to the artist: the composer Julius Eastman (1940-90), and her grandfather the jazz musician Don Cherry (1936-95). Naima is also an archivist and coordinator for the Estate of Moki Cherry and Cherry Archives. She has studied piano in the tradition of her grandfather Don Cherry with her uncles Eagle-Eye and David Ornette Cherry, and with Ana Ruíz. Ana Ruíz and Naima first connected in 2021, when Naima went to study piano with her in Mexico. They have played together in ensembles and as a duo performing improvisations and Don Cherry compositions on two pianos - at locations such as Casa del Lago (Mexico City), Munchmuseet (Oslo) and Barbican Centre (London). Ana Ruíz (b. 1952) is a composer, pianist and pioneer of jazz and improvisation in Mexico. She started Atrás del Cosmos, the first free jazz ensemble in Mexico, with her husband Henry West in 1972, and in 1977 they invited Moki and Don Cherry to Mexico City to teach their Organic Music workshops and tour together over a 6-month period. Ana Ruiz became a student and collaborator of Don Cherry and to this day continues to teach and play his music with her students and contemporaries in Mexico. Ruíz has worked as a music educator, and composer for film and dance productions, and she is the musical director of Ana Ruíz y su Orquesta Kóryma. Her essay Free Jazz, improvisación y experimentalismo en México features in the book Sonidos de México published by Sexto Piso in 2024. Orchestra and the Ana Ruíz Center for Sound Experimentation and Improvisation in Tepoztlán, Morelos celebrated Ruíz's 50 years as an experimentalist in 2025 and continues to perform, record, and push the boundaries of improvised music across Mexico and beyond. Ephraim Asili is an African American filmmaker, educator, and DJ whose work explores the African diaspora as a cultural force. His 2020 feature debut The Inheritance premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, won the Grand Prize at Cinéma du Réel, and was the subject of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, where it's now part of the permanent collection. Asili is a Guggenheim Fellow, Harvard Radcliffe Fellow, and 2025 USA Artist Fellow, and is currently completing his second feature, Don & Moki: Organic Music Society, a hybrid essay/documentary on the collaborative practice of Don Cherry and Moki Cherry. Clips from this in-progress documentary will be featured in the exhibition The Living Temple: The World of Moki Cherry. As a DJ for over 20 years, Asili has built a global reputation for his all-vinyl sets spanning Funk, Disco, House, Afro Latin, and Rare Groove, and has performed at venues including the Whitney Museum, Amant Foundation, and Basilica Hudson's 24-Hour Drone Fest.