Tuesday October 8 * 7pm * $15-25 * TICKETS
Photo: Tarishi Gupta
Lesley Mok (b. 1994) is a New York City-based percussionist and interdisciplinary artist who works in sound, installation, film, and theater. Interested in the ways social conditions shape our beings, Lesley’s work focuses on overacting humanness to explore ideas about alienness and privilege. Their work draws from queer and feminist art practices, Chinese philosophy, Afro-Cuban musical traditions, futurist perspectives, and ancestral knowledge.
Their ongoing explorations with composition and improvisation are most notably documented in their debut album The Living Collection (out May 2023 on American Dreams Records) that features a ten-piece improvising chamber ensemble. The album, described as “an exquisite and stimulating work” by All About Jazz and “a singularly personal statement” by Jazz Trail Magazine, was named International Debut Album of the Year at the 2024 Deutscher Jazz Preis.
Other recent works include stilled leaf-chatter (2022), bird in its chest (2022), pooling light (2021), but I forced to mind my vision of a sky (2020), and she smashed the enclosure (2020).
Lesley is a recipient of the 2022 Resident Artist at Roulette Intermedium, 2021 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award, Hermitage Fellow, 2021 Van Lier Artist at the Asian American Arts Alliance, and a member of the inaugural cohort of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians. Their work has been commissioned and performed by International Contemporary Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, and JACK Quartet.
In addition to their own practice, Lesley is a part of collaborative ensemble vehicle / passenger (Marc Alberto & Florian Herzog). They can also be heard in Myra Melford’s Fire and Water, David Leon: Bird’s Eye, and Anna Webber’s Shimmer Wince.
As a percussionist, Lesley has performed alongside Tomeka Reid, William Parker, Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Malvorson, Kenny Barron, John Patitucci, Cory Smythe, Jen Shyu, Kalia Vandever, Fay Victor, Adam O’Farrill, and others. They have performed throughout the Americas and Europe, including Roulette Intermedium, SF Jazz, Ringling Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Art, Unerhört Festival, Jazzowa Jesien, Cologne Jazz Festival, moers festival, Panama Jazz Festival, and Dominican Republic Jazz Festival.
Phillip Golub (b. 1993), "a musician in fast ascent" (Wall Street Journal) with "seemingly boundless creativity" (Downbeat), is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Los Angeles, he creates highly original and expressive music, grounded in but not constrained by his engaged practice in jazz, creative music, and new music. Technically audacious, Phillip sublates sound worlds as distant as Thelonious Monk and Alexander Scriabin, the ars subtilior and Cecil Taylor, negating conventions, yet building on traditions.
Phillip’s recordings have been praised as “cutting edge” (Sequence 21) and containing “a profound concept […] triumphant […] fascinating” (Pop Matters). As a player, he has been described as bringing “assurance, charisma, and infectious enthusiasm” (Steve Smith) to his performances and manifesting “exhilarating energy, charisma, and a canny ability to transform the complex and even inscrutable into sophisticated yet joyful noise” (Allmusic.com).
Phillip is in demand as a pianist on New York’s jazz, creative music, and world music stages, performing and recording regularly across numerous sub-genres and scenes, such as Layale Chaker, DoYeon Kim, Lesley Mok, Anna Webber, Jacob Shulman, and Seajun Kwon, at venues such as Roulette, National Sawdust, and many other Brooklyn mainstays.
Phillip has an unwavering commitment to honoring the genealogy of jazz. He has played numerous times with Cecil McBee and worked extensively with Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding on their opera … (Iphigenia). He continues to play a crucial role in the Shorter estate, digitizing and preparing manuscripts for publication.
Mickey Lusk is a harpist, improviser, composer and visual artist living in Baltimore. She has developed her own approach to harp playing, embedding shapes and patterns into the muscle memory of the hands. Her music is experienced solely in real time, lush with hypnotic polyrhythms and moody flourishes or spacious and minimal, depending on factors such as caffeine intake or obliquity of the earth or relative humidity.
Majid Araim is an Iraqi-American multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator, curator, visual artist, researcher and a fixture of the Atlanta improvisation and new music communities. Majid's prolific work as a composer focuses on resonance and dynamics, experimental approaches, and is oriented towards the natural world and reimaginings thereof. Since 2019, Majid has been increasingly focusing their sights on theatrical interpretation of expression documented in premiers of Cardinal Queen 2019, Regarding Bullfrogs 2019, Excerpts of an Opera 2020, Fragments From Otherwhere 2021, Giants Moot 2022, and Extrapolations from Otherwhere 2023; all relating to the large form work Otherwhere, a fantasy world existing alongside our own, featuring anthropomorphized animals and magical creatures as characters, accessible to humans only through dreams and meditation and exploring a myriad of themes and subjects from identity to quantum mechanics. Majid has given hundreds of performances across the United States and Europe as soloist and in the duo Whispers of Night, as well as experimental music groups such as Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra, BASrelief, The Convergence, Chamber Cartel, Bent Frequency, sunknameless, and Small Peoples Music Ensemble. Majid is a recipient of PREMIER Artist Residency at Georgia Tech School of Music for Whispers of Night’s work with geofons, specialized contact mics for use in ground mediums, exploring communication through filtration of our natural environment; and individual artist awards from Fulton County in 2023 and 2024 and Creative Capital Atlanta in 2023 to further develop the ever expanding large form work Otherwhere. Also in 2024, Majid received acceptance to the {RE}Happening Festival, held annually by the esteemed Black Mountain College Museum, as well as having a new dance work, “Lifecycle IV: Reflections” premiered at the Decatur New Dance Festival exploring the perspective of our relationship as humans with the nonhuman elements of our ecology . Majid holds degrees in Music Composition and Jazz Studies from Georgia Southern University, and since 2013 has presented over 120 concerts as curator of the Magic Lantern series. In addition to their creative work as a musician, they are a dedicated parent, horticulturist, and animal lover.
Nate Scheible is a DC-based artist who has performed and recorded in a variety of bands and ensembles spanning multiple genres over the past 25 years. Collaborators in recent years include the Bureau of Sensory Affairs (with Alma Laprida), Sarah Hughes, Nik Francis, and the band Drawn with Layne Garrett and Nenet. His background is largely based in improvisation on drums, electronics, and analog tape. His work is featured prominently on releases by the labels Warm Winters Ltd., Unifactor, Feeding Tube, and Never Anything, the most recent album being “or valleys and,” released in 2024 by Outside Time.
Layne Garrett is an improvising musician and founding member of Rhizome.