trē seguritan abalos is a Filipina-American sound artist whose improvisations diverge into soundscapes inflected with flutes, field recordings and text, unraveling notions of belonging, place / displacement, and the body.

A child of Filipino immigrants, trē moved to Pittsburgh in 2016 from San Jose, CA, to study flute with Alberto Almarza and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2018 trē traveled on a research scholarship to Argentina to study the role of música folclórica in performances of whiteness, nationhood, and indigeneity.

From roots in Western classical music trē has become a performer of improvised music, often playing alto flute inflected by studies of Japanese shakuhachi with devon osamu tipp. trē also performs with field recordings and text through an analog sampler, drawn to distortion of memory / familiarity, belonging and tradition within the placelessness of a soundscape.

trē often co-facilitates Open Improvisation Lab held by the Pittsburgh Sound Preserve.

Projects include ambient duo GLO-TREE with GNM; unmade place, a series of improvised sound and text/poetry; a soundtrack for a silent film restored by Pittsburgh Sound + Image, and live soundscapes for Asian/American creative collective JADED.

Records of trē’s playing include “GLO-TREE” (with GNM and Soy Sos), “Three Waves” with David Bernabo; “Sounds of Khūrākī: Live Performances” with Aaron Basskin for RealTime Arts’ theatrical portraits of Afghan women; and a 50-minute live soundscape inspired by Hindustani classical music with André Solomon (flute), Stephen Chin (tabla and cajon), and Aaron Basskin (synthesizers).

Future releases include an album of Sam Rivers’ jazz with the Dylan Zeh quartet, a duo record with electronics by Adam Kantz, and “A Place I Recognized,” an EP of solo soundscapes to be released on Habitat Sounds.

In 2023 trē attended Susie Ibarra and Jake Landau’s first Rhythm in Nature Residency at PS21 in Chatham, New York, field recording and premiering Susie Ibarra’s Four Meditations on Impermanence in an improvising orchestra featuring Tashi Dorji and Phyllis Chen.

trē has performed improvised music in spaces from Telephone and The Government Center to Bantha Tea Bar, The Space Upstairs, Seafoam, Fungus Books, The Big Idea Bookstore, Bottom Feeder Books, Collision, Certain Death ii, Brillobox, Bunker Projects, Stage MK, Mixtape, Scoot’s Garage / Pierogi Palace, Poetry Lounge, Club Pittsburgh, Creative Coffee, Bottlerocket, Spirit, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, the Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, Hall of Sculpture at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Children’s Museum, and the Mattress Factory.