Jack Herscowitz is a Chicago-based composer, improviser, and sound artist working across experimental music and art practices. Described as “the slow descent of the sun at twilight” (A Closer Listen), his current work centers around commitment to unadorned musical materials to reveal their complexities, exorcisms of mass-produced tech, interruptions which peel back the curtains on cultural practices of art making, noise as an activation of the full body, and relational non-hierarchical webs of listening. His practice spans instrumental composition, dramaturgy, electroacoustic improvisation, installation, landscape film, object performance, sampling, text, and communal sound making. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition and Sound Practices at the University of Chicago.
Jeonghyeon Joo is a haegeum performer/composer based in Los Angeles and Seoul. She explores the physical, social, cultural, and political relationship between the performer and instrument, frequently collaborating with composers, filmmakers, visual artists, and performance artists. She has received the Emerging Artist Award from the National Academy of Arts of the Republic of Korea (2024) and the Presidential Award of Korea (2012). As a soloist, she has premiered many contemporary works written for her, including a haegeum concerto recently premiered with Ensemble Modern. She received a Doctor of Musical Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Mystic Elevator is the improvised duo project of Abigail Whitman (voice) and Jack Herscowitz (electronics). Based in Los Angeles, they perform in a variety of spaces throughout the city, adapting their sound to respond to their environment and each other. Abigail engages extended means of sound production with the voice, using techniques such as screaming, word deconstruction, gibberish, and haunting melodic lines. Jack carefully distorts these sounds through live digital sampling, reconstructing and recontextualizing the voice and isolating minute details through loops. Their debut album, It Burns With a Sweetness, was released in Spring 2025 via Harmonic Ooze Records (Tucson).
