Mobius Artist Event: Forbes Graham performs a new work at the opening of “an archive and/or a repertoire”

Join Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) for an opening celebration of an archive and/or a repertoire with a performance by Mobius Co-director, Forbes Graham. an archive and/or a repertoire is the first exhibition examining the administrative Mobius Inc. Records at the Tufts University Archives Research Center (TARC). The exhibition situates the administrative archive of Mobius, Inc. Records—currently housed in Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC)—as a laboratory, exploring the liminal spaces between archives and the performances, new media projects, sound works, dance, and installations that the Boston-based group realized.  

During the exhibition opening, Mobius co-director and composer, musician, sound and visual artist Forbes Graham will perform a newly commissioned work, The Dance of Functions (2025) engaging archival material and previous locations of Mobius Artists Group through programming languages and sound. 

Forbes Graham (b. 1977) is a composer, musician, sound artist, and visual artist whose work explores themes of simultaneity, perceptibility, transformation and collage. He was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Silver Spring, MD. He attended American University, studying music composition, in the mid to late 90s and was involved in the DC and Maryland hardcore scenes, playing in a number of bands and releasing music on his label RiceControl. In the early 2000s, he moved to New England, where he got involved with Boston’s free jazz and improvised music scenes. His work Encounters I for trumpet, electronics, and voices premiered at Roulette in 2019. In 2020, he was selected to work with the JACK Quartet as a part of JACK Studio. The JACK Quartet premiered String Quartet no. 3 that year, which was dedicated to LaToya Ruby Frazier. The Overlook Quartet performed his string quartet Crossing in 2021 at Mass MoCA amongst Linda Sormin’s installation Stream. The piece For Sam Gilliam I, meant to be a tribute to the pioneering painter as well as a meditation on color, was premiered by loadbang in 2022. Earlier that year, [Switch~ Ensemble] premiered Inflection: Beacon Hill/Roxbury, which was commissioned by a LAB Grant from The Boston Foundation. Inflection: Beacon Hill/Roxbury, was written in honor of the migration of the last African American institution to leave Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, the Charles Street AME Church. He performed at (the) co-incidence festival in 2017 and has appeared at other music festivals including High Zero, Vision, The Thing In The Spring, and The Festival of New Trumpet. Graham has appeared on over 40 albums, primarily on trumpet, but also on electronics. He is a member of Mobius Artists Group, a collective of experimenting artists. Past composition teachers include Chaya Czernowin, Eric Wubbels and Julia Werntz.

Photo courtesy of Forbes Graham.