Jennifer Gersten / Bryan Day / Majid Araim & Layne Garrett
About the event
Tuesday September 22 * doors at 6:30, show at 7 * $15-25 * TICKETS Jennifer Wei Gersten is a violinist and writer from Queens, New York. A former tenured tutti violinist with Helsingborg Symfoniorkester (Sweden), she instigates solo and collaborative musical projects in avant-garde and improvised performance, usually in the US and Scandinavia. As a violinist, Jennifer is mainly engaged in the creation of idiosyncratic sounds and situations for her instrument. She often does so as an improviser in experimental and “free” contexts: her 2026 debut record as half of experimental violin-bass duo Goal Weight, a collection of improvised songs titled Keep Telling Yourself That (Relative Pitch Records), has been described as “wildly inventive” ( Squidco ) and “where instrumental identity begins to fray” ( New York City Jazz Record ). With a roster of composer-musicians that includes Jo David Meyer Lysne, Inga Margrete Aas, Luis Fernando Amaya, and Isaiah Ceccarelli, Jennifer is also amidst the development of new works for solo violin. Jennifer additionally works as an independent curator and producer, inventing memorable musical situations that tend to involve vast numbers of string players. Her projects have appeared at MATA Festival, Emily Harvey Foundation, and Darmstadt Ferienkurse, amongst other places. Bryan Day is a sound artist, instrument inventor, and conceptual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using scavenged electronics, repurposed mechanical components, and amplified materials, he reimagines them as constructivist sound sculptures. Since the late 1990s, he has built over a hundred sound devices ranging from amplified measuring tapes and hacked radio transceivers to electromechanical installations using magnets, hard drives, and pendulums. His recorded work spans noisy electroacoustic improvisation, droning minimalism, and audio collage, featured in projects such as Euphotic, Collision Stories, and Seeded Plain. He has performed, taught workshops, and built sound installations across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Majid Araim is an Iraqi-American multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator, curator, visual artist, researcher 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 reimaginings thereof. Since 2019, Majid has been increasingly focusing their sights on theatrical interpretation of expression documented in premiers of Cardinal Queen 2019, Regarding Bullfrogs 2019, Excerpts of an Opera 2020, Fragments From Otherwhere 2021, Giants Moot 2022, Extrapolations from Otherwhere 2023, and Regarding Bullfrogs and Universal Power Dynamics 2024; all relating to the large form work Otherwhere, an imagined world existing alongside our own, featuring anthropomorphized animals and magical creatures as characters, accessible to humans only through dreams and meditation and exploring a myriad of themes and subjects, including play, communication, and observation as a representation of the different degrees in which biological systems coexist in any given environment, creating space for the exploration of how we treat each other and the world in which we exist. Majid holds degrees in Music Composition and Jazz Studies from Georgia Southern University, and since 2013 has presented over 130 concerts as curator of the Magic Lantern performance series. In addition to their creative work as a musician, they are a dedicated parent, horticulturist, and animal lover. Layne Garrett is an improvising musician and instrument builder based in Washington DC. He works with prepared guitars, found objects, and self-built instruments. He plays in the improvising duo Weed Tree with drummer Amanda Huron and various other ad hoc collaborations.
