Jewlia Eisenberg

Jewlia Eisenberg works at the intersection of voice, text and diaspora consciousness. She is primarily a composer, a musician, the leader of the ensemble Charming Hostess, and half of Book of J. Her mission is to make lovely noise about complex ideas. Her work opens up a porous, multi-temporal space that shifts between text and music, between verbal and non-verbal languages, between personal and communal expression in historical and modern experience. Her music is mostly released on the Tzadik label's Radical Jewish Culture imprint. Recordings include Sarajevo Blues on Bosnian resistance poetry and Trilectic on the political-erotic world of Walter Benjamin. She often works in immersive installation—making hybrid spaces that incorporate music performance, visitor participation, and experimental ritual. Installations include Teraphim (Meridian Gallery) on household gods; and The Bowls Project (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) on Babylonian women’s amulets. Jewlia's work has been curated into the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Museum of Peace in Uzbekistan; she performs regularly in Europe and the Americas. She has been a visiting artist at CalArts, MIT, and the University of Colorado, where she has taught on the boundary lands holding music and critical theory. Her hobbies include class war and knitting. Brooklyn born and bred, she now calls Oakland home.