Jess Tsang

Jess Tsang is a percussionist, researcher, and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. She is endlessly examining how objects shape our lives, and how that might be translated into music.

A founding member of guitar and percussion duo party of one and experimental ambient band dogsbody, Jess has also collaborated with an eclectic variety of artists, dancers, and musicians including Rebecca Saunders, David Szanto, Elena Rykova, and Deborah Carruthers. Favorite projects include premiering Nicole Lizée’s interactive Mozart murder-mystery opera No One’s Safe, performing within Martin Creed’s installation The Back Door at the Park Avenue Armory, the world premiere of Dan Trueman and Rebecca Lazier's, Bessie-award winning There Might Be Others, and Kid Millions’ 100 Disciplines, an immersive, hour-long work at the Brooklyn Museum.

She has appeared in performances throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia and was a fellow at the 2018 Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab. In 2019, she was selected as a fellow for OneBeat, an initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in collaboration with Found Sound Nation. Jess is also the founder of listenbeer, a series of multi-sensory concert experiences merging craft beer with experimental music.

Most recently, she was commissioned by Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong to create quotidian, new video work for the 2021 Sound Forms Festival: Present_Present.

As a researcher, Jess has presented her lecture recital at Harvard University for Ex-Centric Music Studies: Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference and at Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane as part of the second annual Transplanted Roots Percussion Symposium. Entitled “Personally curated, yet easily disposable: Crossing the threshold into the realm of found objects”, it is the culmination of her research into the history and expansive ideology of incorporating found objects into contemporary percussion music. She has presented additional lectures at the University of Guanjuato (“People Can Be Trusted” - Performative Dialogues in the Music of Sean Griffin) and the University of California San Diego (How Percussionists Think - Recontextualizing Legacy).

Jess holds a Master’s degree from McGill University and an undergraduate degree from The New School. Her debut album, sound shadows was released by madeFor records in 2021.