Tuesday October 8 * 7pm * $15-25 * TICKETS
A Night of Improvised Collaborations featuring the duo of Lesley Mok & Phillip Golub, and the quartet of Majid Araim, Nate Scheible, & Layne Garrett.
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.
Majid Araim, born 1985, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, curator, 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 fantasy realms. Since 2014 he has presented over 95 concerts through his series The Magic Lantern; connecting people from all over the world through thought engaging performance. In addition to his creative work as a musician, he is a dedicated father, gardener, animal lover and painter.
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.