Every Monday, musicians are pushing the limits of their art at Eyedrum

Both international and local musicians bring improvised, experimental, avant-garde jazz, contemporary classical, electronic and more non-mainstream musical practices to the weekly Monday Night Creative Music Series.

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In a warehouse performance space on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, a dozen or so musicians are seated in a circle, performing for an audience of about 50 people. Their instruments include a saxophone, two trumpets, a trombone, bassoon, flute, bass guitar, mandolin, violin, tablas, a drum kit and assorted percussion gadgetry. The ensemble conductor, Grady Cousins, a longtime Atlanta performance artist across multiple genres, is in the middle of the circle.

Alternately sitting, standing, contorting and gesturing with his hands, Cousins directs the ensemble, first, in an abbreviated version of the sharply percussive Ramayana Monkey Chant and then in support of a lovely vocal section with lyrics having to do with being “on that road.” His highly trained, dulcet-toned voice and expressive body language urge the ensemble along an entirely improvised, mesmerizing, anthemic trajectory.

Forty-five or so minutes into the performance, as the music ascends to a wailing crescendo, Cousins brings everything to an abrupt halt, leaving the musicians and audience no choice but to stop and listen. Minutes tick by. Outside of the room, a bus accelerates away from a traffic light; an EMS siren wails; indistinct voices speak. Inside, the air thrums with electrical current; the steel window frames crack with the wind. The extended stillness and random noise morph into a deeply introspective, nearly spiritual experience.

Eventually, a few folks, overcome by self-consciousness and pent-up energy, can no longer contain themselves. Smiles appear, followed by giggles, which turn into full-blown ecstatic laughter. Then everyone in the room leaps to their feet, applauding and shaking their heads in euphoric harmony.

Thus concludes another installment of the Monday Night Creative Music Series (MNCMS) at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery.

The Monday Night Creative Music Series was founded in the fall of 2025 by a group of Atlanta-based musicians — Katherine Young, Alexandria Smith, Ipek Eginli, Will Hamilton, Kebbi Williams and Jeff Albert — who also performed at the series’ inaugural concert.

The following Monday featured solo improvisations by New York-based drummer-guitarist Kevin Murray and Chicago-based guitarist-saxophonist Will Greene, plus a trio consisting of multi-instrumentalist Majid Araim, vocalist Monique Osorio and guitarist Alex Cohen — all from Atlanta. Rounding out the first month of the MNCMS was a solo performance by former local saxophonist-composer Jeff Crompton.

The MNCMS defines itself as an open and welcoming space for Atlanta’s creative musicians and curious audiences. Its programming supports the city’s diverse musical communities focused on improvised, experimental, avant-garde jazz, contemporary classical, electronic and other non-mainstream musical practices. With the first anniversary approaching in September, bassoonist Katie Young says the MNCMS was a project whose time had come.

“There just seemed to be a lot of us who agreed that it was time for a weekly series that would facilitate setting up concerts for musicians coming through town from out of town,” Young said. “For me personally, I was excited about this because I feel like I was constantly missing shows. It’s hard to sometimes find out about what’s happening. Instagram is a horrible way to learn about events. If there is a show every Monday — and maybe you can’t come every week — but you just know it’s going to be awesome.”

Atlanta has long been a nurturing ground for edgy, experimental, DIY music-makers — from the underground laboratory era of the 1980s and ’90s through the present day, when progressive education programs at Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Clark Atlanta and Emory Universities are churning out super-talented young musicians, composers and technologists, particularly in the realms of jazz, contemporary classical and multimedia studies. While Atlanta offers a number of opportunities to test out and refine ideas in front of a modest but loyal group of patrons at select venues, the MNCMS occupies a special niche in the firmament.

“I feel like there was a little thing in the zeitgeist,” Albert, a trombonist, remarked. “We had all been involved in regular, ongoing series at points in time in various places … and … there just wasn’t a thing like that in Atlanta. There were similar things, but the consistency of something every week is both good for musical development and social development. We all have friends in other places that travel, and it’s nice to say, well, look, if you can be here on a Monday, we can give you a gig and get to hear you play and share your music with our friends and colleagues and folks in Atlanta.”

So far, the MNCMS has presented more than 60 concerts featuring adventurous music from all over the planet. Performers such as Lina Andonovska, a North Macedonian flutist who mostly trained in Australia currently working on her PhD at Emory; Kerem Ergener, a Turkish-born electronic music composer and multimedia artist who spent four years as a lecturer-in-residence at the King Mongkut Institute of Technology in Bangkok; and Tatsuya Nakatani, originally from Osaka, Japan, now residing in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, who specializes in solo improvisational percussion and leads the Gong Orchestra, which allows non-musicians from the local community to play large bowed gongs in an ensemble setting.

“So the things that we feature are ultra creative, on the far end of the spectrum of creativity and experiments … that push limits. And to have a consistent place where that happens is just so gold,” said MNCMS founding member Williams. A Grammy-winning saxophonist, composer, improviser, community organizer and leader of The Wolf Pack jazz ensemble, Williams has been a major force on the Atlanta music scene for a couple of decades.

“Having a place to come and knowing that somebody’s going to be there pushing limits is just so valuable and educational, even for the most professional of musicians because you’re not in everybody’s mind — and the far reaches of somebody’s mind is probably not like yours,” Williams said.

So far, the response to the MNCNS has been overwhelmingly positive, somewhat to the surprise of its progenitors.

“What I thought was going to take six to eight months to build up, we were at that level of people embracing it in a month or two,” Young said. “The friendly experiencers of Atlanta do it very quickly … and the beautiful thing is we have a lot of regulars who aren’t musicians. Often in these scenes around creative and experimental music, we’re playing for our own people, the people who make the music. But we have many regulars who are just people who like interesting music and come hang out.”

The Monday Night Creative Music Series at eyedrum is all set to put something different between your ears. Check out the series calendar at eyedrum.org for information about upcoming performances.

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An Atlanta native, Doug DeLoach has been covering music, performing and static arts in his hometown and beyond for five decades. Doug is a regular contributor to Songlines, a world music magazine based in London, and his ruminations on arts and culture have appeared in publications such as Creative Loafing, Georgia Music, ArtsGeorgia, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, High Performance and Art Papers.