Thursday May 14 * doors at 6:30, music at 7:00 * $20-$30 * TICKETS
Transparent Productions presents...
Zoë Jorgenson (bass, vocals), Marty Riesemburg (drums), and Parker Speirs (guitar/sounds).
Luke Stewart (bass, electronics) and JoVia Armstrong (percussion, sound artist).
Fountaine is the latest project from Zoë Jorgenson and her trio. Rooted in a fascination with the connection between sound, memory, and place, the group explores how the textures of everyday life can inspire music through the use of interspersed field recordings. Themes of grief and transition run throughout their work as they combine acoustic and electronic elements. A desert native, Zoë’s compositions reflect the richness of natural landscapes, weaving melodic bass lines and vocals into immersive soundscapes.
ZOË JORGENSON is a bassist, composer, and educator whose work spans jazz, classical, indie, and folk music. She leads the Zoë Jorgenson Trio and regularly performs at the Washington Women in Jazz Festival, among other events. Previously, Jorgenson has toured with big bands and chamber orchestras in the Baltics, Sweden, Finland, and the Philippines, and has conducted orchestras in Bolivia. A versatile and accomplished string pedagogue, Jorgenson is working on a masters in jazz performance and teaches violin, viola, cello, and bass. Zoë is a member of the Strathmore Artist in Residence Class of 2024.
PARKER SPEIRS is a guitarist and composer who feels at home playing jazz standards, new music, reimagined classical repertoire, and much more. He has released several albums under his own name as well as with his crossover trio The Inventures, an ensemble that reimagines classical music by infusing it with jazz, rock, and pop. His talents have landed him a coveted spot as an Artist in Residence at the Strathmore Music Center for the 2023-2024 season. He has recorded with many artists from the pop, R&B, and jazz worlds. Parker resides in the Washington D.C. area and is an in demand guitarist, maintaining a busy performing, teaching, and composing schedule.
MARTY RISEMBERG is a drummer, percussionist, composer, and educator. He has recorded and toured in Japan and Hungary with the jazz fusion trio Swansong and has performed at the One Belt, One Road International Youth Music Festival with the Wammie award-winning Project Locrea. Other collaborators include Outerloop, Attic Sessions Band, and Minnush. When he’s not performing, Risemberg is an educator at The International School of Music in Bethesda, Maryland.
LUKE STEWART is a musician, performer, improviser-composer, organizer, and writer-researcher whose work represents a deep reverence for the history and tradition of Creative Music: a tradition which encompasses the diverse styles of expression within the body of Black Music in the United States, Africa, and throughout the world. Stewart’s regular ensembles include Irreversible Entanglements, SILT Trio, Exposure Quintet, and the experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths; he also performs regularly in numerous collaborations.
In his Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier and Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier Vol 1 and Vol 2 (Astral Spirits, 2018, 2021, 2022), Stewart explores real-time harmonic and melodic possibilities, as well as the intersection of the acoustic and the electronic—the relationship between wood and electricity. He uses the resonant qualities of the bass and one or more amplifiers to create reverberations from the plucking of strings, his bow, and moving the instrument itself back and forth in space.
Over the years, Stewart has performed at Arts for Art’s Vision Festival, New York, NY; Winter Jazzfest, New York, NY; The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C; Rhizome DC, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, TN; the BIMHUIS, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark, among many other venues and festivals in the United States and abroad. As a scholar, Stewart has also performed and lectured at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, NY; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; University of Montana, Missoula, MT; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; and the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
Stewart has had residencies at Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NY; The Hermitage Artist Retreat, Englewood, FL; and Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY. He received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2022) to support his work with KO Arts in New Orleans. Stewart was noted in DownBeat as one of twenty-five performers to “shape jazz for decades” (2020).
He holds a B.A. from American University and an M.A. from The New School, where he is also an adjunct professor in the College of Performing Arts. Stewart is a co-founder and artistic director of CapitalBop, a Washington, D.C.-based jazz nonprofit.
https://thelukestewart.com/
JOVIA ARMSTRONG is a Detroit-born percussionist, composer, sound artist, and educator whose multidisciplinary career spans continents, genres, and communities. Known for her visionary blend of experimental composition, Black musical traditions, and immersive technologies, Armstrong’s artistry is rooted in rhythm and storytelling. She has performed and collaborated with a diverse range of artists, including El DeBarge, Omar, The Impressions, Les Nubians, Rahsaan Patterson, Maysa, Joe Vasconcellos, Nicole Mitchell, Isaiah Sharkey, Jeff Parker, Frank McComb, and Malian musicians Ballaké Sissoko and Babani Koné, among many others. She also appears in Johnny Gill’s music video Soul of a Woman, featuring Tiffany Haddish.
JoVia’s performance practice is deeply informed by her foundation in classical, jazz, and Afrodiasporic music traditions. She studied orchestral percussion, French horn, and cello at Detroit’s prestigious Cass Technical High School, but her passion soon shifted toward global percussion traditions after discovering Afro-Latin and Middle Eastern rhythms. This curiosity eventually led her to study Afro-Cuban percussion with Francisco Mora-Catlett as a freshman at Michigan State University, where she was a performance major. She expanded her scholarship of the African diaspora while working at the Center for Black Music Research during her time at Columbia College Chicago, where she earned a B.A. in Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management. Soon after graduating, she learned to play the cajon while touring with a group of South American musicians to honor the legacy of Chilean poet & politician Pablo Neruda.
Armstrong’s compositional voice draws inspiration from the complex rhythms and sonic textures of artists such as Herbie Hancock, Susana Baca, Rabih Abou-Khalil, Osibisa, Azymuth, Danilo Pérez, and Sun Ra. Her hybrid approach to percussion includes acoustic and electronic instrumentation, allowing her to create lush, immersive soundscapes. This fusion is evident in her long-standing role as a percussionist and composer for the Detroit-based world-jazz ensemble Musique Noire, whose album Good Hair earned three Detroit Music Award nominations. The group won Best Black Female Jazz Group in 2015 from the Black Women in Jazz Awards and released Reflections: We Breathe in 2017.
JoVia also served as percussionist, background vocalist, and tour manager for JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound from 2012 to 2018. She composed and produced their 2018 EP, Red, Black, and Blue, an emotionally charged album that addresses racial tensions in America.
As a bandleader, she fronts Eunoia Society, a project that pushes the boundaries of contemplative music and sonic technology. The ensemble combines composition with immersive tech—including multichannel audio, telematics, and time-based processing effects—to create meditative environments for audiences. Eunoia Society’s 2022 release, The Antidote Suite, was composed for The Black Index, an art exhibition curated by Dr. Bridget Cooks. The album, featuring special guests Isaiah Sharkey and Jeff Parker, received critical acclaim, with JazzTimes drawing comparisons to Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band and The New York Times describing it as having “the humid magnetism of a weather pattern.” The group’s 2023 follow-up, Inception, was also widely praised in publications including The Wire, DownBeat Magazine, and Jazziz.
An advocate for youth empowerment through music and technology, Armstrong has over two decades of experience as a teaching artist and mentor. She worked alongside Bro. Mike Hawkins at Chicago’s Digital Youth Network and YOUmedia Chicago, guiding young people in creative digital expression. Her work in this area earned her the 3Arts Siragusa Foundation Artist Award in 2011. She is dedicated to reaching young girls and introducing them to electronic music production and sound technology, to help them build their self-esteem.
A highly respected leader in the creative music community, Armstrong is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Chicago, where she served on the executive board as Secretary and chaired the membership committee. She is an endorsed artist with QSC, Sabian, Icon Pro Audio, and Gon Bops. In 2015, she was awarded Best Black Female Percussionist of the Year by the Black Women in Jazz Awards. She is named as one of Downbeat Magazine’s Rising Star Percussionists in 2023 and 2025.
JoVia holds a Ph.D. in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from the University of California, Irvine, where she examined how creating contemplative music through the Black lens could combat unconscious bias. She is now an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia’s Department of Music, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses.
https://www.joviaarmstrong.com/