Photo of Rebecca Novak by Jeremy Hernandez
Bio
Born in Chicago and raised in Miami and Michigan, musician and artist Rebecca Novak began playing piano by ear at the age of four. Widely listening to jazz and improvised music, she played orchestral horn in Chicago and Houston until the mid-1990's, then breaking away from music for over a decade to study and practice drawing, painting and sculpture, and later becoming involved in photography, dance, and writing as a performance practice. Her work often combines music with sculpture, live writing or projected image as a way to investigate the complex relationships between self and environment, body and object, performance and being, the political and the philosophical.
As an improvising musician, Novak works with a shifting constellation of instruments and objects - cornet, piano, Autoharp, glass vases - with an ear for fine-grained textures and mechanical or electronic sounds using acoustic instruments. She has performed and recorded in the trio Garden medium with Sandy Ewen (guitar and objects) and Carol Sandin Cooley (electronics and voice); in duos with tape/electronic musician Steve Jansen and percussionist Anders Zelinski; in the sound + light duo Waveform Reversal with projectionist/bassist Ivy Woods, and with many other musicians.
Novak has performed and presented her work at Project Row Houses (Houston, TX), Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), The Station Museum (Houston, TX), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), Minicine? (Shreveport, Louisiana), Marfa Open (Marfa, TX), Ghost (Santa Fe, NM), ATA (San Francisco), No Idea Festival (Austin, TX), Molton Plains (Denton, TX), Alabama Song (Houston, TX), and through residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts with Master bassist Michael Bisio, and labotanica (Houston, TX) with artist/curator Ayanna Jolivet McCloud.
Selected Projects / Performances
2023
Solo and duo - Birgit Ulher (cornet, radio, speaker), Rebecca Novak (cornet, radio, objects) - They, Who Sound, Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX
2022
Waveform Reversal (with Ivy Woods) - Marfa Open (Marfa, TX), Other Cinema (San Francisco, CA), Molten Plains VI (Denton, TX)
Quintet with Rhodri Davies (harp), David Dove (trombone), Ryan Edwards (guitar) and Gabriel Martinez (percussion) - They, Who Sound - Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX
Nameless Sound ensemble performing the compositions of Le Quan Ninh, with Le Quan Ninh, Midtown Arts and Theater Complex Houston (MATCH)
2021
FLOW: A Geological Time Play in 4.5 Million Radical Acts of Community (Annotation 3.5.4.5) - Round 52, Project Row Houses, curated by Ryan Dennis and Willie Jamaal Wright
A transcribed conversation: Groundwater recharge (animated video) - EM tv, curated by Gabriel Martinez, Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago (live streamed)
2020
Interference Festival - Austin, TX (live streamed)
2019
No Idea Festival - Austin, TX
Annotation 2.5 - Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX
Nameless Sound/Rice University ensemble performing the compositions of George Lewis, with George Lewis, Rice University Moody Center for the Arts
2018
Annotation: Love in the Time of Real Time - Beyonce's Garage, Houston
Annotation 2 - minicine?, Shreveport, LA
Annotation 3.0 - Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
Fluxus Seminarium: Event Scores, curated by Natalie Harren and David Dove - Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX
2017
Atlantic Center for the Arts (residency), with bassist Michael Bisio, New Smyrna Beach, FL
CEPRO Sound Orchestra (Mexico City)/Nameless Sound Orchestra, MECA, Houston, TX
Atrium, duo with Anisa Boukhlif (laptop & field recordings), The Station Museum, Houston, TX
Listen around your way, Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH), DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
2016
Garden medium - El Nicho y el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico
2015
PerFormative Poiesis: A Timed Play in 3 Acts - DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
2014
Adding a Beat - Hirsch Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, curated by Hanna Yoo
Radio DWOW - SonicWorks, DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
Daughter of Lady Friends Experimental Music Salon - Church of the Friendly Ghost, Austin, TX
Fig Pudding Performs - SonicWorks, DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
Anthology, Meditations: A Marathon Performance of Pauline Oliveros Scores - SonicWorks, DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
Education
MMus, Northwestern University, Evanston, ILBMus, DePaul University, ChicagoGlassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston