presented by Feed Me Weird Things: get tickets here
$15 / $10 students & PS1 members
Eli Wallace is a pianist, improviser, composer, and curator who resides in Brooklyn, NY. He works as a solo artist but also collaborates with musicians in improvised and creative music communities such as Daniel Carter, Ingrid Laubrock, Michael Foster, Sam Newsome, Billy Mintz, Jessica Ackerley, Sandy Ewen, Carlo Costa, Sean Ali, Lester St. Louis, Erika Dicker, Joe Moffett, and others. Additionally, he co-curates the music and art installation series Invocation with Drew Wesely.
In 2021 he was very fortunate to be selected as an artist in residence at Casa Wabi in Mexico, where he performed public piano concerts and developed a new system of musical notation. Additionally in 2021 he released the album Precepts, a studio recording of a graphic composition. Ken Hollings (The Wire) opined “Eli Wallace has created a work of continual reinvention.” A highlight of 2020 was his release SOLO/DUO with Beth McDonald, and Paul Acquaro (Free Jazz Blog) says it “...impresses at every obtuse juncture. Cool stuff.”
His work as a pianist displays his vast milieu of experiences from classical, jazz, and free improvisation studies, while incorporating contemporary piano performance practice and preparation to create a sound that is uniquely his own. His compositions employ notational strategies to broaden the manner in which sounds are created and the ways in which musicians interact.
He has written pieces ranging from solo piano to full studio orchestra, receiving numerous commissions. Over the past decade he has appeared on dozens of albums and has performed at such esteemed venues as The Stone, New York, NY, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL, and the Outsound New Music Summit, San Francisco, CA. His music education was granted from Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, and New England Conservatory, Boston, MA.
Grain Bin Operettas is an emerging artist of rural Iowa whose unconventional cello sound ranges from the angular, emotional spontaneity of abstract expressionism to the romantic horror of film noir.