Our Events

Outlier features some of the most compelling artists in the experimental jazz sector, while also providing venues with the entirety of admission sales. Our goal is to elevate the standards for artist compensation, without sacrificing a dedication to art and experimentation.

Watch performances from our participating artists and venues.

FEBRUARY 19TH AT JACK (18 PUTNAM AVE, BROOKLYN)

CECILIA LOPEZ (solo electronics)

“STEPH AN MAY ER” (solo electronics)

MICHAEL FOSTER / LUKE STEWART DUO (saxophones & bass duo)

https://www.facebook.com/events/533610677504069/

Luke Stewart is a DC/NYC-based musician and organizer of important musical presentations. He also has a presence in the national and international professional music community. He was profiled in the Washington Post in early 2017 as “holding down the jazz scene,” selected as “Best Musical Omnivore” in the Washington City Paper’s 2017 “Best of DC,” chosen as “Jazz Artist of the Year” for 2017 in the District Now, and in the 2014 People Issue of the Washington City Paper as a “Jazz Revolutionary,” citing his multi-faceted cultural activities throughout DC. In DC his regular ensembles include experimental jazz trio Heart of the Ghost, Low Ways Quartet featuring guitarist Anthony Pirog, and experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths. As a solo artist, he has been compiling a series of improvisational sound structures for Upright Bass and Amplifier, utilizing the resonant qualities of the instrument to explore real-time harmonic and melodic possibilities. He has performed at many of Washington’s high-profile venues including the Kennedy Center, the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, 9:30 Club, Black Cat, and many others throughout DC’s storied DIY community. Luke is also a presence in the greater community of Creative Musicians, with regular multi-city ensembles including Irreversible Entanglements featuring Moor Mother, James Brandon Lewis Trio, Heroes are Gang Leaders, Ancestral Duo, and has performed in a myriad of other notable collaborations. He has been a featured artist at the Vision Festival, Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music, Fields Festival, Philadelphia Free Form Festival, Forward Festival, Furious Flower Poetry Festival, and has toured abroad at North Sea Jazz Festival, Toulouse Jazz Festival, Vitoria Jazz Festival, Belgrade Jazz Festival, and Rotterdam Jazz Festival. As a scholar/performer, he has performed and lectured at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Medgar Evers College, George Mason University, Wayne State University, University of Montana, New Mexico State University, and the University of South Carolina. He holds a BA in International Studies and a BA in Audio Production from American University, and an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship from the New School.

Michael Foster is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist working in the fields of free improvisation, noise, free jazz, graphic & video notation, performance art, and other forms of weird music.
Foster utilizes extensive instrumental preparations, augmenting his saxophone with amplification, objects, balloons, drum heads, vibrators, tapes, and samples as a method of subverting and queering the instrument’s history and traditional roles.
​In addition to his work as a performer he is also active as a curator throughout New York City, co-founding "Queer Trash," a curatorial collective focusing on providing visibility to LGBTQIA+ performers engaged in experimental performance practices.

Cecilia Lopez is a composer, musician and installation artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores the boundaries between composition and improvisation, as well as the resonance properties of diverse materials through the creation of non-conventional sound devices and systems. She holds and M.F.A from Bard College and an M.A. in composition from Wesleyan University. Her work has been performed at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Festival Internacional Tsonami de Buenos Aires, Floating Points Festival at Issue Project Room (New York), Ostrava Days Festival (Czech Republic), MATA Festival (New York), Experimental Intermedia (New York) Kunsternes Hus (Oslo) and Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius). She was a Civitella Ranieri fellow in 2015. Collaborations include projects with Carmen Baliero, Carrie Schneider and Lars Laumann among others.

"St ephane May e r" is an artist based in Vancouver, Canada — the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His compositions, installations, and performances, examine emergent and historical sound technologies. Highlighting material instability and unruliness, his work explores the flows of sonic matter through sound systems, instruments, software, and bodies, to uncover alternate modes of authorship and listening possible within specific technologically-mediated situations. ____ works fluidly between contemporary classical music, sound art, experimental electronic music and installation. His work has been presented by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kunsthal Aarhus, Ultima festival, SPOR festival, G(o)ng Tomorrow, and Gaudeamus Muziekweek, among many others. In 2017 he received a Mayor’s Art Award from the City of Vancouver and is a 2019 Macdowell Colony Fellow. Stefan currently lectures in music composition at Simon Fraser University.

DECEMBER 16TH AT JACK (18 PUTNAM AVE, BROOKLYN)

AKI ONDA solo & MANAS (Tashi Dorji - guitar & Thom Nguyen - drums)

8pm doors, 8:30 sharp music, $10

Aki Onda
Onda was born in Japan and resides in New York. He is particularly
known for his “Cassette Memories” — works compiled from a “sound
diary” of field-recordings collected by using portable cassette
recorder over a span of last three decades. He creates compositions,
performances, and visual artworks from those sound memories.

Onda often works in interdisciplinary fields and collaborates with
filmmakers, visual artists, musicians, and choreographers. For the
last fifteen years, he has worked with artists such as Ken Jacobs,
Michael Snow, Paul Clipson, Raha Raissnia, Takashi Makino, Daisuke
Yokota, Maxime Rossi, Annea Lockwood, Loren Conners, Alan Licht, MV
Carbon, Che Chen, Tashi Dorji, Noël Akchoté, Jean-François Pauvros,
Jac Berrocal, David Toop, Rie Nakajima, Akio Suzuki, Nao Nishihra,
Toshio Kajiwara, and Takao Kawaguchi.

Onda has presented his work at The Kitchen, MoMA, P.S.1 MOMA, ISSUE
Project Room, Blank Forms, ICA Philadelphia, REDCAT, Time-Based Art
Festival, Images Festival, Novas Frequências, documenta 14, Louvre
Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Cartier, Présences électronique,
Argos, Bozar, Wiels, ICA London, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Counterflow
Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Impakt Festival, La
Casa Encendida, Caixa Forum, Serralves Museum, Nam June Paik Art
Center, Sound Live Tokyo, Hara Museum and many others.

Onda is also active as a curator. From 2016 - 19, Onda served as TPAM
Direction Director at TPAM - Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama,
Japan. He organized performances and exhibitions of a number of
artists including Gozo Yoshimasu, Akio Suzuki, Takehito Koganezawa,
Yoshihide Otomo, Senyawa, Ngọc Đại, and The Observatory. Those events
took place festivals and venues such as The Kitchen, Time-Based Art
Festival, Vancouver New Music, Around Sound Art Festival of
soundpocket and many others.

MANAS
Tashi Dorji grew up in Bhutan, on the eastern side of the Himalayas.
Residing in Asheville since 2000 and soaking up a vast array of music.
Along the way, Dorji developed a playing style unbound by tradition,
yet with a direct line to intuitive artistry. His recordings feature
improvisations that spasmodically grow along tangential, surprising
paths. All references break loose during a composition, as Dorji keys
into his own inner world. His compositions drag the listener into a
labyrinth of warbling tones, where each sound seems to jump out and
replace the eerie silence that would otherwise occupy the atmosphere.
The textures remain sustained in the reverberation as the vibration of
the strings dwindle and ascend. After a handful of releases on
various labels since 2009, Dorji presented his debut LP on Hermit Hut,
the label created by Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) in 2014.
And since Tashi has released music both as a soloist, and with duo
projects, notably with percussionist Tyler Damon and MANAS (w/ Thom
Nguyen) on labels like Bathetic Records, Cabin Floor Esoterica, Blue
Tapes, Marmara Records, Feeding Tubes, UNROCK, VDSQ, MIE, Ultra Violet
Light, Family Vineyard and Astral Spirits.

Thom Nguyen is an Asheville-based percussionist and drummer of Nest
Egg, MANAS, House of Land, etc. Producing energetic bursts and
invoking a sensitivity to space that one often associates with
Free-Jazz and New Music percussion, Nguyen’s approach elegantly
bridges works of sonic sculpture with a punk aesthetic of immediacy,
of aggression and playfulness. Among Nguyen’s many recent creative
activities, he released the MANAS self-titled album along with
guitarist Tashi Dorji and opened for legendary Saxophonist, Peter
Brotzmann.