This spring, Elliot Bergman will create a site-specific installation and series of musical performances at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles. Bergman will install his Peace Bells, made from melted guns and bullet casings, as well as a number of his sound sculptures, to create a complete sonic environment in the first floor Theater Gallery. This installation explores the acoustical properties of the massive space, and the materiality of sound and vibration. His ensemble will create music that ranges from minimal and meditative, to sculptural and architectural. The intricately layered and rhythmic compositions draw inspiration from Gamelan music and West African drumming, and Bergman’s performances have drawn comparisons to Moondog, Partch, Bertoia, Reich and Konono No. 1.

Elliot Bergman’s Peace Bells will run from Friday, March 29-Sunday, March 31 during public hours at MAF. Separate tickets are not required for this event, all general admission ticket holders are welcome to attend.

Elliot Bergman is a musician and visual artist that lives in Los Angeles. After studying Jazz, Composition, and Gamelan music at the University of Michigan, he has been an active part of the creative music scenes in Brooklyn and Chicago while touring extensively with groups including Wild Belle, NOMO, Iron and Wine, and His Name is Alive.

His musical and visual art practices are uniquely intertwined. Bergman often builds the instruments that form the basis for many of the compositions in Wild Belle and NOMO: variations on the African Mbira that are electrified and amplified. His interest in metal work led him to take bronze casting classes at a Chicago area community college, and he has been producing bronze sound vessels and sound sculptures since 2012. He has exhibited his visual work at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago, where he had a solo show in 2017 called Praxis, and at the Hirshhorn Museum as a part of their Sound Scene show in summer of 2017.