Music
Gilgul (cmntx)
2023
https://adamlion.bandcamp.com/album/gilgul
Adam Lion's intensely repetition-driven performances are an engrossing study on the possibilities of sound. His solo vibraphone is enough to flood a room with music one would only expect from amplification or supplementary electronics. Slowly evolving ostinatos result in pulsating, dissonant overtones whose frequency beatings bring about scintillating clouds of polyrhythms; in a live setting, it is enough to bewilder one's ear drums. In "Gilgul", Lion has captured this phenomenon as a certain metamorphosis takes place.
"Gilgul (or גלגול) is the Hebrew word that points to metamorphosis. In the scriptures or the Torah, gilgul is associated with generational recycling, human transformation through time, history and familial love. In Jewish mysticism from the 12th to the 17th centuries, gilgul came to mean the recycling of the souls at death, or spiritual transformation. In Jewish mystical constructs (Kabbalah) souls leave the bodies of the dead and take part in a holistic plan, re-entering bodies to re-learn lessons of life. Today, gilgul points to generational and spiritual transformation and more. It has come to mean the radical amazement of second-to-second transformation of body and soul as we as individuals and a community continually wake up to new potentiality. In this, gilgul points to what we see and do not see, to what we are and who we will become, and to the phenomenal beauty of widening perspectives and human flourishing."
-Caroline Lion
The Reinvention of Romance (Astral Spirits)
2020
https://reinventionofromance.bandcamp.com/album/the-reinvention-of-romance
“The Reinvention of Romance,” a new work for percussion and cello that examines the care and empathy that emerge when two lives share space. Over the course of 90 minutes, a series of repeating patterns creates a peculiar kind of harmony in which two musicians are rarely “playing together” but are nonetheless intimately bonded. The Knoxville-based duo Two-Way Street (Ashlee Booth and Adam Lion) commissioned Hennies to compose “a very long piece;” for this recording they step into its two intertwining roles.
Featured in The New York Times, Pitchfork Media, and Bandcamp Daily among many other publications, journals, and magazines.
IO (New Village Tapes)
2020
https://newvillagetapes.bandcamp.com/album/io
"Io is made of contradiction: piercing and still, rowdy and tranquil, forceful and timid. Saxophonist Ben Cohen, percussionist Adam Lion, and bassist Matt Nelson have come together to explore the possibilities of subtle, textural sound. Spasmodic energy colors a placid atmosphere made of industrial hums and eerie tones; sparse bursts of cacophony emerge and fade away almost as soon as they enter. Their pieces hover in a restrained quietude, a serenity that is ready to explode at any moment."
-Vanessa Ague
Adam Lion/Matt Nelson, live at the Pilot Light
2019
Percussion repertoire- works by Helmutt Lachenmann, Iannis Xenakis, and Minoru Miki