Joshua Abrams & Sharon Udoh: Wonder Wonder
Saturday, September 26
TIME: 2:15pm - 2:45pm
VENUE: The Neubauer Collegium. 5701 South woodlawn ave.
In the fall of 2026, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society will present Love Bless America, an exhibition of new works by the Brussels-based French artist and filmmaker Pierre Bismuth (b. 1963). The centerpiece of the exhibition is a long-form meditative film documenting the creative meeting between two leading figures from Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene: Joshua Abrams and Sharon Udoh. Bismuth has tasked them with composing a 21st-century spiritual based on a lyrical hymn he wrote for the project. Bismuth’s double portrait traces both the magic and the workaday practice of “inspiration,” using the commingling of religious musical traditions as a point of departure for a multi-layered reflection on love, music, and the divine. Abrams and Udoh will be performing the resultant music as part of the opening of Pierre Bismuth: Love Bless America.
A photo of on the left Sharon Udoh’s arm and hand with blue finger nail polish resting on a piano; Joshua Abrams’s hand is also resting on the piano on the right side of the frame.
Joshua Abrams
Joshua Abrams is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and improviser. His early musical experiences include busking on the streets of Philadelphia as an original member of hiphop legends The Roots and performing with composer Earle Brown. In 2010 he formed Natural Information Society (NIS), recording eight albums of his compositions for Eremite Records and two for Drag City Records in collaboration with Bitchin Bajas. Working the seams between minimalism, jazz and experimental practice, NIS has become a touchstone for contemporary non-idiomatic creative music. Abrams has scored eleven feature films including the Oscar nominated Abacus: Small Enough To Jail. Often acknowledged as a double bassist his collaborations include work with Fred Anderson, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Dave Burrell, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Evan Parker, Jeff Parker, William Parker, Mike Reed, Matana Roberts and Chad Taylor as well as contemporary artists Lisa Alvarado, Theaster Gates and Simon Starling. He recently served as musical director for The Harvest Time Experiment and released Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation on Drag City and Perseverance Flow w/ NIS on eremite.
Sharon udoh
Sharon Udoh (b. 1981) is a Nigerian-American pianist, improviser and hymnologist whose initial music training was shaped in large part by her membership in the Pentecostal Church. Udoh moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago in 2022, and quickly immersed herself in the city’s prodigious experimental music scenes. She has been recording and performing with avant-rap group clipping. since 2019, and acts as a curator for the roving Pianist and a Partner Perhaps concert series that has seen her team up with Jim Baker, Chris Corsano, Erez Dessel, and Justin Dillard, among others. Udoh is a 2026 United States Artist fellow whose current projects include The Black Soaps, an episodic opera with Marvin Tate about Black Chicago domestic life; Potluck, her sextet with Angelo Hart, Fred Jackson Jr., Mabel Kwan, Avreeayl Ra, and Ken Vandermark; and her ongoing solo project American-African Hymnal, which draws from her deep relationship to hymnal literature in the United States.
This program is presented in partnership with the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago. The Neubauer Collegium cultivates new communities of inquiry at the University of Chicago. The faculty-led research projects bring together scholars and practitioners whose collaboration is required to address complex questions on any topic. Our Visiting Fellows program brings the most creative thinkers from around the world for collaboration, animating the intellectual and creative life on campus. The gallery presents contemporary art exhibitions in the context of academic research, and our public events invite broad engagement with the scholarly inquiries we support. The aim of these activities is to deepen knowledge about the world and our place in it.