Overview
Mark Mahoney is a Ph.D. student in Musicology. His scholarly interests revolve around experimental music, broadly conceived, and its intersection with critical theory, sound studies, and a range of interdisciplinary approaches. His research has explored the contested legacies of high modernism, the relationship between political and aesthetic transgression in various 20th-century avant-gardes, and the institutional history of ethno/musicology and music studies more generally. Mark is an avid student of jazz, improvised and creative music, and has presented on the music and reception histories of Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk. He has contributed music criticism to numerous publications, including Cacophony Magazine, Dusted Magazine, and The Walker Art Center Reader.
Mark comes to Cornell from Chicago, where he immersed himself in that city's vital music scene as a presenter, composer and performer, and as Assistant Director of the Elastic Arts Foundation, a nonprofit, artist-run performance space. As a performer, he has dedicated himself to a broad spectrum of improvised music and to the works of both established and emerging living composers, among them Laura Adkins, Herbert Brun, Mark Hardy, Eva-Maria Houben, Jeff Kowalkowski, Jack Langdon, Terry Riley, Adam Shead, and Scott Wollschleger. While in Chicago, he also served as an instructor with the non-profit Access Contemporary Music.
Mark graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature.