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, imperceptibly glacial sonic transformations, interruptions which peel back the curtains, noise as an activation of the full body, and relational webs of listening. His practice spans instrumental composition, dramaturgy, electroacoustic improvisation, installation, performance art, landscape film, field recording, object performance, sampling, text, and communal sound making.

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Jack performs improvised live electronics on (mostly) digital instruments with groups Mystic Elevator and Castle Anthrax in addition to various solo improvisers. His solo performance practice draws from noise, glitch, vaporwave, and lo-fi electronics to re-claim the sounds of capitalism's sonic warfare. He creates multidisciplinary works alongside choreographers, installation artists, poets, video artists, and filmmakers as a collaborative artist. His recorded music has been released on Zoomin' Night (Beijing), Harmonic Ooze Records (Tucson), Drongo Tapes (Seattle), and Searching Records (Joshua Tree), with upcoming releases on zappak (Tokyo) and Sawyer Spaces (Denton). 

 

Festivals, venues, and organizations that have presented his work include: IRCAM ManiFeste (Paris), CENART (CDMX), Barcelona Modern Festival, The Moscow Conservatory, Neofonía Festival (Ensenada), Norges musikkhøgskole (Oslo), The DiMenna Center (NYC), .abeceda Contemporary Music Festival (Bled), The Composers Conference (as a Fromm Foundation Fellow), NettNett Radio/Space (Tijuana), Norcal NoiseFest (Sacramento), Hear Now Festival (Los Angeles), soundpedro (San Pedro), The Watt From Pedro Show (San Pedro), Villa Aurora (LA), 2220 Arts and Archives (LA), Beyond Baroque (LA), The Dog Star Orchestra (LA), Barnsdall Art Park (LA), Sandbox Music (Santa Fe), The Brick Theater (NYC), and Riverside Church (NYC). His instrumental music has been performed by the Arditti Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Atlantic Reed Consort, Althea Waites, Syntagma Piano Duo, Hypercube, Apply Triangle and .abeceda Ensemble. Jack has held residencies at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony (Temecula, Barbara Fellowship), Oracle Egg (Los Angeles), and the Spencer Museum of Art (University of Kansas), and has been supported by grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. 

 

Jack is pursuing his PhD in Composition and Sound Practices at the University of Chicago. He received his MFA in Composition and Experimental Sound Practices from CalArts and his BA in Music and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College.