Natacha Diels / Dave Broome / Mark Southerland
Drifters Theater
January 7, 2026
Tulsa’s got a lot of big arts and culture events on the horizon in the first half of 2026: a Nine Inch Nails blowout at the BOK Center, Ethel Cain at (no relation) Cain’s, a new production of Oklahoma!, and the triumphant return of Hot Wheels Live, to name a few. Looking out at the largesse to come, I decided to make my first art experience of the new year as niche as possible, like snuggling into the tiniest nest at the center of a set of Matryoshka dolls. Give me a minute to gather myself before I go out and get blasted by Trent Reznor, Ado Annie, and Gunkster, okay?
Pretty quickly after it opened last year, Owen Park’s Drifters Theater became one of my favorite places to escape to. Good people, sweet patio, Tulsa skyline in the distance, roaring fire in the firepit, hot tea and apple cider, creaky old church pews to sit on while listening to fresh sounds created by some of the most interesting musicians in Tulsa and beyond—if you’re looking for a music experience unlike anything else in the city, an evening at Drifters is a great bet. Some shows here are loud and heavy, some are more quietly meditative; all will have you thinking about them for a good long while after you head home.
The first event of the year at Drifters, a $15 Wednesday night foray into some extraordinary musical worlds, still has me in a trance 36 hours later. Hosted by Dave Broome—a Manhattan School of Music-trained pianist and composer who’s been wowing Tulsa’s new music lovers with his technologically innovative work for quite a few years now—the show was full of wide-ranging wonders performed by three adventurous and uncategorizable talents: Natacha Diels, Mark Southerland, and Broome himself.
Diels might not be someone you’ve heard of, but her star is rising in the world of global experimental music. An assistant professor of music at the University of Pennsylvania, she’s composed work for ensembles like the JACK Quartet and festivals from Buenos Aires to Norway. Musical America magazine has described her as “a tour de force of reckless imagination and confident craft,” and critic Steve Smith calls her music “brilliant, bananas in the best sense, elegant, eloquent, and loopy.” She and Broome are both members of the internationally acclaimed Ensemble Pamplemousse, founded in New York City in 2003.
Stopping in Tulsa on a tour that will take her to Ireland and England later this spring, Diels opened the Drifters evening with “Am I Alive,” a solo set for (among other elements) voice, tiny music boxes, theremin, and what she’s described as “dismembered metronomes” and “half-remembered conversations with machine friends.” Her delicate rig looked a bit like the top of my late grandma’s vanity, and her gestures with these little objects had the careful touch of someone doing a private homemade ritual. Sitting in low light, over a burbling, twittering undersong, Diels began by tinkling bells and coaxing an operatic vibrato out of tuning forks set onto a sound board. As a pink glow washed over the stage, this sweet sonic nonsense continued to hang in the air as she shifted into rhythmically off-kilter pings with a xylophone mallet and, in a clear, simple voice, took us through some moments of a day, a life, a cosmos.