Artists Studio
Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran, this series showcases a diverse mix of some of today’s most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound and the voice. All of these imaginative innovators defy categorization and blend artistic forms, and their performances allow them to freely explore their artistic sensibilities and exciting new directions in their creative practice. Realized in the Veterans Room—a monument to the American Aesthetic Movement designed by Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists—these interventions expressly mirror the innovative spirit of the exceptional young artists present at the room’s inception.
2026 Season
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Artists Studio
Jason Moran
In celebration of 10 years of performances and installations by imaginative innovators that blend artistic forms, the series curator assembles an ensemble of special guests and past series performers for an evening of performance and reflection in the very space where these daring new works came to life.
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Artists Studio
Joy Guidry
This multifaceted artist creates a ruminative performance in the spirit of a Southern church revival and based on her ambient album Five Prayers, reimagining it into movements based on different themes of Black American spirituality and artistic expression, ranging from jazz and minimalism to opera, ballet, blues, and gospel.
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Artists Studio
Jamire Williams
This multidisciplinary artist creates an immersive and experimental solo percussion performance that pushes the boundaries of rhythm, texture, and memory through a dynamic interplay of acoustic instruments, vintage samplers, and analog tape machines.
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Artists Studio
Raven Chacon
A MacArthur Fellow and first Native American winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music showcases his unique artistry with a new work that cuts across boundaries of visual art and performance in his ongoing illumination of landscapes, their inhabitants, and histories.
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Artists Studio
IONE
This noted sound artist returns to the Veterans Room to lead a deep listening exercise—Listening with Dreams—with artistic collaborators to explore the difference between the involuntary and voluntary nature of hearing and the selective nature of listening through movement and interactive sonic meditations.
Past Artists Studio Events
2025 Season
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Artists Studio
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Veteran sound artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe gives the world premiere of "The Unbearable Comedy of Caterwaul in 4 Parts" for synth, voice, and bowed and struck instruments, a window into an aleatoric method for electroacoustic music.
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Artists Studio
Sofia Jernberg
Swedish experimental singer, improviser, and composer Sofia Jernberg is joined by guest musicians for a unique performance of some of her own pre-existing and new compositions that embrace her creative practice of communion and collaboration.
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Artists Studio
Guillermo E. Brown
Drummer, composer, and creator Guillermo E. Brown shares an insightful overview of the past, present, and future of his work, including some of his Creative Capital projects and original compositions played on his new audio-visual musical instrument.
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Artists Studio
Sandra Mujinga
Norwegian artist and musician Sandra Mujinga comes to the Veterans Room to broaden and expand her practice in the performative spectrum by creating an otherworldly sonic environment that plays off of the spatial architecture of the room.
2024 Season
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Artists Studio
Jasper Marsalis / Slauson Malone 1
Artist and musician Jasper Marsalis performs a set with cellist Nicky Wetherell, layering dissonant sounds on top of one another to create a dense and dizzying suite of sonic collages that invite close listening in this uniquely intimate environment.
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Artists Studio
Moor Mother & Irreversible Entanglements (IE)
Poet, musician, and activist Moor Mother gives two distinct programs: a solo set of fringe and avant-garde sonic landscapes rooted in industrial, electronic, noise, punk, and hip hop; and a program with free jazz quintet Irreversible Entanglements.
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Artists Studio
EJ Hill
Performance artist EJ Hill comes to the Veterans Room with a team of his primary collaborators for an evening of song, storytelling, and sonic exploration titled Anthems for the Resolute When the Sky is Empty, featuring original music and artwork.
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Artists Studio
Maori Karmael Holmes
Filmmaker, writer, and curator Maori Karmael Holmes hosts a talented mix of artists with whom she has worked throughout her career in two unique evenings of screenings, performances, and talkbacks presented in the style of a variety show.
2023 Season
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Artists Studio
AACM Listening Session
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill joins Artists Studio curator Jason Moran for a discussion and listening session spotlighting the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and their creative impact on American music.
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Artists Studio
Double Bill: Thurman Barker & The Colsons
The Thurman Barker Quintet performs excepts from Barker's South Side Suite, Pandemic Fever, and Mr. Speed-str on a double bill with Adegoke Steve Colson and Iqua Colson's Unity Troupe with special guests Chico Freeman and Douglas R. Ewart.
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Artists Studio
The AACM: Power Stronger Than Itself
Scholar-composer George E. Lewis presents an historical overview of the works of the famed Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and its unusually prominent role in the development of American experimental music.
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Artists Studio
The Reggie Nicholson Percussion Concept
Drummer and composer Reggie Nicholson performs some of his recent works and world premieres for percussion ensemble, displaying his “exquisite splashes of color and unmetered cascades on the drums” (Chicago Tribune) with his own ensemble.
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Artists Studio
Amina Claudine Myers Choral Workshop
Prodigious pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, and improvisationist Amina Claudine Myers leads a vocal workshop for aspiring singers and the general public to perform some of her original compositions.
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Artists Studio
Double Bill: George Lewis & Amina Claudine Myers
Members of the International Contemporary Ensemble gives the US premiere of George Lewis' Blombos Workshop and Assemblage on a double bill with Amina Claudine Meyers and Richarda Abrams, performing Meyers' partially improvised work Stay in the Light.
2022 Season
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Artists Studio
Joan Jonas
A pioneer of performance and video art, multimedia artist Joan Jonas presents out Takes: What the Storm Washed In, composed of both unseen and historical video strung together like beads on a string, connected by poetry, music, and performance.
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Artists Studio
Jason Moran
Pianist and composer Jason Moran returns to the Armory’s Artists Studio series for a night of solo piano and jazz, his first solo program at the Armory since the series’ inception in 2016.
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Artists Studio
Rodney McMillian
Conceptual artist Rodney McMillian performs Hanging with Clarence, which combines Clarence Thomas' speeches with funk-rock songs. The resulting performative work is part musical theater salon, part rock concert, and part spiritual testimony.
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Artists Studio
Camille Norment & Craig Taborn
Multimedia artist Camille Norment is joined by improvising pianist, composer, and electronic musician Craig Taborn for Infinitive, which uses touch, pronouncing silence, and sonic feedback as dynamic instruments to experience the extremes of sound.
2021 Season
Artists Studio
Carol Szymanski & jaimie branch
Trumpeter jaimie branch and sculptor Carol Szymanski present the Phonemophonic Alphabet Brass Band. Szymanski's 26 brass instrument sculptures based on the alphabet are animated by branch and joined and a large ensemble of fellow brass musicians.
2019 Season
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Artists Studio
Roscoe Mitchell
Jazz titan Roscoe Mitchell comes to the Veterans Room for two distinct programs that spotlight his wide ranging compositional output from solo performances to larger groupings of musicians.
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Artists Studio
Miya Masaoka
A prolific and consistently experimental composer, improviser, and performer Miya Masaoka performs a number of new works, displaying her reputation as a legend New York and a master of the understanding of sound in global jazz and avant garde circles.
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Artists Studio
Malik Gaines & Alexandro Segade
Founding members of My Barbarian, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade create and perform a new work, Star Choir, developed during their Armory residency, which tracks a group of humans who attempt to colonize a hostile planet after the Earth’s decline.
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Artists Studio
Rosa Barba
Artist Rosa Barba invites audiences to recast their perspective in an act of radical reversal with images, collaborating with percussionist Chad Taylor on a performative work within a site-specific installation inspired by the Veterans Room.
2018 Season
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Artists Studio
Alvin Curran
Experimental composer Alvin Curran performs “The Alvin Curran Fake Book,” including his Shofar Shoals, which features a ram's horn plugged into a computer to create sonic fireworks, as well as his Endangered Species, Era Ora, and Unstandard Time.
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Artists Studio
Matana Roberts
Composer, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner Matana Roberts continues her anthropological examination of music, storytelling, and the long, diverse history of her birth country in a site-specific performance in the Veterans Room.
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Artists Studio
Charlemagne Palestine
A pioneer of experimental music, Charlemagne Palestine creates an immersive, site-specific installation in the Veterans Room that invites audiences into his colorful, fantastical world.
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Artists Studio
Juliana Huxtable
Art icon and powerhouse DJ Juliana Huxtable creates a new work combining video, sound, spoken word, and performance in her ongoing exploration of human resistance to the caging of people within fixed selves, private bodies, and prescribed identities.
2017 Season
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Artists Studio
Dawn of Midi
The Brooklyn-based acoustic ensemble comes to the Veterans Room to play a set based on their album Dysnomia, using sophisticated rhythmic structures from North and West African folk traditions to weave a sonic tapestry of trance-inducing grooves.
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Artists Studio
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakamoto comes to the Veterans Room with his long-time collaborator and visual artist, Shiro Takatani, to present a work that mixes both sound installation and musical performance for the first time in his career.
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Artists Studio
Rashaad Newsome
Multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome comes to the Armory to premiere Running, a new immersive performance evoking an abstract portrait of soul created through light and voice.
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Artists Studio
Dominique Eade & Ran Blake with Kavita Shah
The influences and improvisational fluidity of jazz take center stage in a double bill of artists who infuse their sets with unique musical cultures and perspectives, including vocalist Dominique Eade, pianist Ran Blake, and composer Kavita Shah.
2016 Season
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Artists Studio
Jason Moran
Jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran inaugurates the Veterans Room with the first Artists Studio, a performance of works for solo piano, commemorating the auspicious occasion with a live recording for future release.
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Artists Studio
Louis Andriessen & Jason Moran
Dutch contemporary composer Louis Andriessen is joined by pianist Jason Moran for an artfully-curated set for two pianos giving a contemporary context to musical improvisation, moving this art form from its origins in the time of Bach to the modern age.
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Artists Studio
Pauline Oliveros & Ione
Composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros and author, director, and dream specialist IONE explore the difference between involuntary hearing and voluntary listening through movement and sonic, interactive meditations in a Deep Listening Intensive.
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Artists Studio
Conrad Tao & Tyshawn Sorey
Pianist and composer Conrad Tao and multifaceted percussionist and instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey unite to create a collaborative, evening-length work that explores the liminal space between notated and improvised music.
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Artists Studio
Milford Graves & Deantoni Parks
The art of music making gets examined through the lenses of science and technology in this thrilling double bill of music and projection by percussion pioneers: drummer and acupuncturist Milford Graves and drummer and musician Deantoni Parks.
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Artists Studio
Lucy Raven
American artist Lucy Raven comes to the Veterans Room to reimagine her work Tales of Love and Fear, a unique instance of cinema that is as much a film as it is a kinetic sculpture performing the architecture of the space it inhabits.
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Artists Studio
Camille Norment & Craig Taborn
Multimedia artist Camille Norment partners with pianist, composer, and electronic musician Craig Taborn in a program that traces the fringes of sound, perception, and historical memory and perfectly marries with the varying aesthetics of the space.
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Artists Studio
Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch
Artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin is joined by his principal collaborator Lizzie Fitch, music producer and DJ Ashland Mines, and composer/producer Aaron David Ross to present a new, digitally-inflected sonic composition live for the first time.