Eli Keszler

Eli Keszler is an American percussionist, composer, and visual artist based in New York City. Known for creating complex sound installations involving piano wire and other mechanisms to accompany his live performances, the shows sometimes involve visual elements such as Keszler's drawings, diagrams, screen prints, and writings. In 2012, Pitchfork wrote that "Keszler deserves recent attention for his large-scale sound art installations, which not only force musical ideas to interact with an acoustic environment but, in turn, for flesh-and-bone musicians to interact with both of them."[2]

Keszler has also toured or collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jandek, Loren Connors and the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, and has released several solo albums since 2008. The most recent, Alps in 2014, was a collaboration with guitarist Oren Ambarchi. Keszler recently debuted a sound installation project where he mounted wires up to 800 feet long off the Manhattan Bridge.[1]

He has had exhibitions of his visual work, installations and performances at museums and galleries such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Kitchen, South London Gallery, LUMA Foundation, Tectonics Festival in Reykjavik, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, and Boston Center for the Arts. He and David Grubbs recently debuted a piece at the MIT List Center.

Eli Keszler was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. By the age of eight he was learning drums, and he began composing his own music at age twelve. He began playing in various rock and hardcore bands in his teenage years, and later graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.[1] Upon graduation he moved to Providence, Rhode Island and then to New York City.