About this Artist

Jessie Cox is a composer, drummer, educator, and music theorist currently in pursuit of his doctorate degree at Columbia University. He has written over 100 works for various musical ensembles, including electroacoustic works, solo works, chamber and orchestral works, and works for jazz ensembles and choirs. He has composed for performers such as JACK Quartet, Claire Chase, String Noise, International Contemporary Ensemble, Rebekah Heller, Vasko Dukovski, Either/Or, Cory Smythe, Ryan Muncy, Katinka Kleijn, Promenade Sauvage, Janet Underhill, Cehryl, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, and more.

As a performer he has played in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA with musicians from all over the world, including Roman Filiu, Julian Shore, Mark Wade, Maher Beauroy, Eric Wubbels, Marc Hannaford, Brian Krock, Weston Olencki, Lester St Louis, Sam Yulsman, Barbara LaFitte, Lucy Clifford, Tomas Sauter, and Alexander Levin, among others.

He has studied composition with Georg Friedrich Haas, Richard Carrick, Seth Cluett, Derek Hurst, Marti Epstein, and drums with Neal Smith and Tony “Thunder” Smith. Jessie has played at the Accra Jazz Festival and the Martinique Jazz Festival with the Maher Beauroy Trio, Rhythm and Thought Festival with High Key People. His compositions have been performed at NUNC3 at Northwestern University, New Music Gathering, Bang on a Can Music Series, Roulette Interpretation Series, OpenICE Library Festival at Lincoln Center, Composers Now Festival, Frequency Series at Constellation in Chicago, String Noise Sounds Series in NYC (where he is also co-curator), and Polyfold, and won the Leroy Souther’s Award (2015) and the Bill Maloof Award (2017) for his compositions. He was a finalist in the international composition competition ALEA III for his piece Earth for two bassoons, and two of his compositions have been regularly featured on the NPR station WGBH.

Jessie Cox graduated from the Berklee College of Music on scholarship in 2017, with a degree in composition.