Music in the Stacks: Penn Sound Collective Presents Max Johnson and Eliana Fishbeyn

A collaboration between the Albrecht Music Library and the Department of Music, Music in the Stacks brings Penn musicians into library spaces for performances throughout the year.

In this edition, Max Johnson and Eliana Fishbeyn, graduate students in music composition, present a concert at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center.

About the Artists

Max Johnson

Described as “an intrepid composer, architect of sound and beast of the bass...” (Brad Cohan, NYC Jazz Record) composer, bassist, and improviser Max Johnson creates complex worlds of sound, challenging his listeners to engage deeply and be rewarded with an experience always crafted with love, care, and clarity. With a dozen albums and over two thousand concerts internationally with artists like Anthony Braxton, Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, David Grisman, Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Grimes, Sam Bush, Mark Dresser, John Zorn, Nels Cline, William Parker, and Mivos Quartet, Johnson brings a wild energy and excitement. He has been commissioned by the Jerome Foundation, Society of Composers Inc, Steven R. Gerber Trust, University of Glasgow; been featured on over fifty albums; and can be heard in Spike Lee's Academy Award winning film, "The BlacKkKlansman".

Eliana Fishbeyn

Eliana Fishbeyn comes from an immigrant Russian-Jewish family, where her mother, aunt, and grandmother nurtured her musical upbringing from an early age. At six, she began classical piano lessons with John Ruggero, to whom she owes much of her musical understanding. 

Currently, Eliana is a 2nd-year PhD student in music composition at the University of Pennsylvania. Her compositional practices explores two distinct sound worlds: her relationship with spontaneous composition at the piano and her emerging connection to electronic music. In both of these spaces, she is interested in experimenting and blurring the lines between fixed and spontaneous material, examining how these elements interact and challenge each other.

Having spent much of her life in a highly controlled musical environment, Eliana now craves chaos—the kind of art and creation that defies logic, embracing multiple realities simultaneously. Her music often revolves around constantly morphing soundscapes, inviting listeners to lose themselves in dream worlds of nostalgia, romanticism, chaos, and noise.

Penn Sound Collective

Penn Sound Collective is a group of doctoral fellows in music composition at the University of Pennsylvania presenting and promoting each other's work.
 

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