Jelani Surpris
Jelani Surpris is an intermedia composer from Atlanta, Georgia (USA) who continues to study alongside Chaya Czernowin, Hans Tutschku, Wadada Leo Smith, Vijay Iyer, and James Ogburn. His work employs auto-ethnography and forms of dialectical analysis as a means to analyze our global discourse with blackness, queerness, and Haitian history. Surpris is concerned with prose being a sibling to his musical work and neighboring forms of multimodal creation such as improvisation, electroacoustics, and visual media to unite practitioners and collaborators of their music.
Last updated: August 18, 2026
