Gneiss & Adam Lion

Thursday 30 January 2025 • 8pm

Gneiss & Adam Lion

$15

GNEISS (pronounced "nice"), a band from Los Angeles consisting of JEONGHYEON JOO (haegeum) JOSHUA GEROWITZ(guitar, composition), ETHAN MARKS (trumpet, composition), and GEORGIA E. BELL (bass, composition/design), brings a set of composed and improvised music themed on the formation and transition of rock. This is a concert in support of their upcoming self-titled album developed and recorded throughout 2023. Adam Lion opens the night with new and in-progress work.

Gneiss

Adam Lion

Offering “a tone so pure it is almost a sine-wave” (The Wire), Adam Lion is an experimental percussionist who specializes in vibraphone performance. Interests that guide his music include improvisation, perception, acoustics, repetition, process, immediacy, and spontaneity. Notable projects include his release with Sarah Hennies and Ashlee Booth “The Reinvention of Romance” (Astral Spirits), a residency with New York University composer collective “nevermind the noise”, and his solo vibraphone album “Gilgul” (cmntx). He has collaborated closely with a diverse spectrum of contemporary artists including Harold Budd, bang on a can, and Brian Weitz of Animal Collective. He has received funding from New Music USA, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The North Carolina Arts Commission and has been a featured performer at the Big Ears Festival, University of Chicago, the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, the Red Room, MASS MoCA, and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.

Jeonghyeon Joo

Jeonghyeon Joo is a haegeum performer and composer based in Los Angeles and Seoul. Her practice includes performance, composition, improvisation, artistic research, collaboration, writing, and teaching. She explores the physical, social, cultural, and political relationship between performer and instrument, frequently collaborating with filmmakers, dancers, composers, and performance artists. Her original performance projects have been supported and presented by the Arts Council Korea and the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture and have received the Presidential Award of Korea. Joo holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Performing Arts in the Seoul Institute of the Arts in South Korea and a Program Director at CultureHub.

https://www.joowork.com

Ethank Marks

Ethan Marks is an experimental trumpet player and producer whose work deals with the collision between body and instrument. His music is usually improvised, sometimes silly, and has involved feedback, video, noise, household objects, power tools, and plundered recordings. Twoself-released albums, dune and bloom, are about smells and biomes. He directs a DIY noise series, Sounds Poetic, in downtown Los Angeles, and co-directs High Desert Soundings, in Wonder Valley, outside of Joshua Tree. Ethan lives in LA with his cats, Leela and Morbo, and wife Jeonghyeon Joo.

Josh Gerowitz

Joshua Gerowitz is a composer, performer, improviser, and guitarist who resides in Los Angeles. His work is concerned with live human interaction, the juxtaposition of premeditation and spontaneity, as well as the fickle nature of our perceptual senses. He has written and performed music that involves everything from traditional instruments to bottom-shelf beer tastings, knife sharpening, ping pong, and surfing. Gerowitz has performed in many different settings and locations including but not limited to Teatro Manzoni, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Paradise Rock Club, REDCAT, Bowtie Project, Clockshop, Firehouse 12, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. His recordings have been referred to as “eccentric and original work of multidimensional and captivating music” (Vital Weekly), and he has been called “a creative soul with hugely impressive chops, as his keen vision is assertively concentrated on blazing newer trails” (All About Jazz). Gerowitz is a cofounder (along with Georgia Bell) of SatanNotSatan (a community based multi-disciplinary artistic salon founded in 2014). He holds a B.M. in guitar performance from Berklee College of Music and an M.F.A. from CalArts in Performance/Composition.

Georgia E. Bell

Georgia E. Bell is an American double bassist and composer based in Los Angeles. With a background in experimental music, Bell’s practice is grounded in improvisation, play, and creative collaboration. Bell is a cofounder (along with Josh Gerowitz) of SatanNotSatan, a salon in Los Angeles since 2014.