Biography
Marielle V Jakobsons works from Oakland, California as a classically trained multi-instrumentalist and intermedia artist. Her compositions favor rich, melodic drones built from synthesizers alongside acoustic strings and flutes, yielding a meditative, mystical character that recalls minimalist composers such as Terry Riley. Deeply engaged with sensory awareness, she constructs immersive environments that fuse light and sound, and she has completed residencies at multiple art organizations while exhibiting photography, installations, and videos at universities and galleries.
She pursued contemporary piano performance studies at Case Western and the Cleveland Institute of Music, then trained in computer music composition at the Center for Computer Composition of Iannis Xenakis in Paris. At Mills College in Oakland she received her Master of Fine Arts and was awarded the Elizabeth Mills Crawford Award in Composition. Jakobsons contributed to several solo recordings by experimental composer Gregg Kowalsky, with whom she formed the duo Date Palms in 2008. Under the solo name Darwinsbitch she issued the album Ore on Digitalis in 2009; the same label released The Amber Sea that year, the debut recording by Myrmyr, her duo with Agnes Szelag.
She played on Barn Owl’s Ancestral Star, the group’s Thrill Jockey debut from 2010, while Date Palms placed subsequent albums on Root Strata and Mexican Summer. Myrmyr’s second album, Fire Star, appeared on Under the Spire in 2011. In 2012 Jakobsons and Kowalsky joined the Bay Area experimental supergroup Portraits—also featuring members of Barn Owl, Tarentel, and En—for its self-titled album, and Alex Cobb’s Students of Decay label issued Glass Canyon, her first solo studio album under her own name. Expanded to a quintet, Date Palms delivered The Dusted Sessions on Thrill Jockey in 2013. Jakobsons also contributed to recordings by the Norman Conquest and guitarist Chuck Johnson, and she developed the Macro Cymatic Visual Music Instrument, which generates audio-visual art by transducing sound waves through water and light. She has employed the instrument in both live performances and visual works, among them the artwork for her 2016 Thrill Jockey album Star Core.
She pursued contemporary piano performance studies at Case Western and the Cleveland Institute of Music, then trained in computer music composition at the Center for Computer Composition of Iannis Xenakis in Paris. At Mills College in Oakland she received her Master of Fine Arts and was awarded the Elizabeth Mills Crawford Award in Composition. Jakobsons contributed to several solo recordings by experimental composer Gregg Kowalsky, with whom she formed the duo Date Palms in 2008. Under the solo name Darwinsbitch she issued the album Ore on Digitalis in 2009; the same label released The Amber Sea that year, the debut recording by Myrmyr, her duo with Agnes Szelag.
She played on Barn Owl’s Ancestral Star, the group’s Thrill Jockey debut from 2010, while Date Palms placed subsequent albums on Root Strata and Mexican Summer. Myrmyr’s second album, Fire Star, appeared on Under the Spire in 2011. In 2012 Jakobsons and Kowalsky joined the Bay Area experimental supergroup Portraits—also featuring members of Barn Owl, Tarentel, and En—for its self-titled album, and Alex Cobb’s Students of Decay label issued Glass Canyon, her first solo studio album under her own name. Expanded to a quintet, Date Palms delivered The Dusted Sessions on Thrill Jockey in 2013. Jakobsons also contributed to recordings by the Norman Conquest and guitarist Chuck Johnson, and she developed the Macro Cymatic Visual Music Instrument, which generates audio-visual art by transducing sound waves through water and light. She has employed the instrument in both live performances and visual works, among them the artwork for her 2016 Thrill Jockey album Star Core.
Albums
Singles
