Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 8:00 PM
New Theater Hollywood, Los Angeles
SITTING ON AN EARTHQUAKE, DANCING ON A VOLCANO MICHAEL PISARO-LIU JOHN HOLLOWAY LIVE IN CONCERT WITH JUDITH BERKSON GRACE DASHNAW IVAN CUNNINGHAM ADAM LION MK VELSORF Friday, May 8, 8pm Saturday, May 9, 8pm Sitting on an Earthquake, Dancing on a Volcano is a collaboration between sociologist and political theorist John Holloway and composer Michael Pisaro-Liu. The hour-long spoken word and musical piece, performed by Holloway, Pisaro-Liu and a group of Los Angeles musicians – including Judith Berkson, (piano) Ivan Cunningham (saxophone), Grace Dashnaw (cello), Adam Lion (percussion) and MK Velsorf (samples and guitar) – draws out the connections between silence and noise, the ensemble and the commune. It speaks to the hope we might kindle for a future world in which value is measured not by money but by human dignity and the joys of a flourishing, inclusive, communizing harmony. – MICHAEL PISARO-LIU is a guitarist, composer, long-time member of the Wandelweiser collective, and the director of Composition and Experimental Music at CalArts. While Pisaro-Liu is known (like other members of Wandelweiser) for pieces of long duration with periods of silence, over the past two decades his work has branched out in many directions, including work with field recording, electronics, improvisation and large ensembles of very different kinds of instrumental constitution. Recordings of his music can be found on Edition Wandelweiser, erstwhile records, elsewhere music, Potlatch, another timbre, ftarri, winds measure and other labels. JOHN HOLLOWAY has written widely on anti-capitalist struggles and the meaning of revolution today. He is particularly inspired by the Zapatista movement and the Kurdish Freedom Movement. His trilogy, Change the World Without Taking Power (2002), Crack Capitalism (2010) and Hope in Hopeless Times (2022) has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has stirred international controversy. He is a professor in the graduate school of sociology in the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico.