Hannah Marks' Outsider, Outlier Band

Hannah Marks is a bassist, bandleader, composer, and educator living in New York City. As a bandleader, she has performed at several major festivals, including the Detroit Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Iowa City Jazz Festival, and Indy Jazz Festival. Her current band, Hannah Marks: Outsider, Outlier, is a genre-defying, lyric-based project. Marks plays in many bands including Tide Pools, with alto saxophonist Alfredo Colon and drummer Connor Parks, as well as for singer-songwriters Elora and Jack Broza. She is a frequent sideman with Geoffrey Keezer, Ingrid Jensen, Kalia Vandever, Matt Wilson, Ted Nash, Morgan Guerin, and Marcus Printup. Her former project, Heartland Trio, released their debut album in November 2018. Marks is a 2021 alumnus of the Woodshed Network, a 2019 alumnus of Betty Carter Jazz Ahead, a 2018 alumnus of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, and a 2014 alumnus of the Brubeck Summer Jazz Colony. She is on faculty at The Spence School and runs her own private lesson studio. Marks is currently an artist-in-residence at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in New Jersey and a curator for Green Lung Studio in Brooklyn.

Heavily influenced by her love for punk, noise, and free improvisation, Hannah Marks: Outsider, Outlier is a departure from the NYC bassist's usual chordless jazz trio format. The project revolves around lyrics and music depicting pivotal events in Marks’ search for belonging and empowerment. Fans of her previous groups Tide Pools and Heartland Trio will enjoy the same raw energy from the band as well as a new level of vulnerability reflected in the bandleader’s compositions. She was commissioned by The Jazz Gallery twice in 2020 to create original music videos for their Lockdown Sessions series as an extension of this project. Recent shows with the band include The Jazz Gallery and Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church.