Jacob Wick is a trumpet player and improviser. Originally from the suburbs of Chicago, Wick has lived in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Los Angeles, and has performed with a variety of improvisers and composers in a variety of contexts, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (US), the Moers Jazz Festival (DE), and el Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MX). He has performed with Toshimaru Nakamura, Bonnie Jones, Katherine Young, Andrew D’Angelo, Josh Roseman, and many others. He has released recordings on Marginal Frequencies, Relay Recordings, Prom Night Records, Peira, Diatribe, and Creative Sources. He holds a BM from Purchase College, SUNY, and an MFA from the California College of the Arts.
In performance, Wick works to privilege the perspective, experience, and expressive capacities of ambient non-human actors—air ducts, airplanes, birds, cement—over his own experience as a white, cis, American male. This approach is indebted to a wild commitment to queer politics and years of cruising contemporary and 20th century art and/or life theories. Current projects include an often-shifting solo trumpet performance, slowly building listening and/or visualization exercises, and Dos/Tres Hongos, a duo or trio with Marc Riordan and Frank Rosaly.
Wick’s September 2016 solo tour will build on a recent European solo tour, in which he developed a method of manipulating the trumpet in a way that allowed for performing long, nearly static textures that shift slowly over time depending on the slow deterioration of Wick’s performing body. These fall performances will expand on these explorations of spit, air, metal, and Wick’s own physical limitations.