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.

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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 DIY labels: Harmonic Ooze Records (Tucson), Drongo Tapes (Seattle), and Searching Records (Joshua Tree), with upcoming releases on Zoomin' Night (Beijing) and zappak (Tokyo). 

 

Festivals, venues, and organizations that have presented his work include: IRCAM ManiFeste (Paris), CENART (CDMX), Barcelona Modern Festival, The Moscow Conservatory, Norges musikkhøgskole (Oslo), .abeceda Contemporary Music Festival (Bled), The Composers Conference (as a Fromm Foundation Fellow), NettNett Radio/Space (Tijuana), Neofonía Festival (Ensenada), Norcal NoiseFest (Sacramento), Hear Now Festival (Los Angeles), Hupa Brajdič (Ljubljana), soundpedro (San Pedro), The Watt From Pedro Show (San Pedro), Villa Aurora (LA), 2220 Arts and Archives (LA), Coaxial Arts (LA), Beyond Baroque (LA), The Dog Star Orchestra (LA), Barnsdall Art Park (LA), Sandbox Music (Santa Fe), 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, .abeceda Ensemble and the soloists of Talea Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble and the Locrian Chamber Players. Jack has held residencies at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony (as a Barbara Fellow) and the Spencer Museum of Art (with Amorphous Ensemble) and has been supported by grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. 

 

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