Film Forum

Tom Surgal is best known for directing a series of groundbreaking music videos for leading alternative bands like Sonic Youth, Pavement and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Tom was initially mentored in filmmaking by Brian De Palma and would go on to work in a wide range of film production jobs, including production design and casting. Tom is also a musician who has performed regularly with Nels Cline (Wilco), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Jim O'Rourke and Mike Watt (Minutemen, The Stooges) and is co-leader of the improvisational ensemble White Out. He is also a curator who has programmed celebrated music series at various downtown New York venues, including an entire month of shows at John Zorn's hallowed performance space The Stone. Tom is recognized as a leading authority on Avant-Garde Jazz and boasts one of the world's largest collections of Free Jazz recordings.

Thurston Moore started Sonic Youth in 1980. Since then, Moore has been at the forefront of the alternative rock scene since that particular sobriquet was first used to signify any music that challenged and defied the mainstream standard. Moore turned on an entire generation to the value of experimentation in rock n’ roll – from its inspiration on a nascent Nirvana to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation album being chosen by the Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006. Moore records and performs in a cavalcade of disciplines ranging from free improvisation to acoustic composition to black/white metal/noise disruption. He has worked with Yoko Ono, John Zorn, Bobby Gillespie, Cecil Taylor and many others. He is also involved with publishing and poetry, and teaches writing at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder. Presently he performs and records solo, with various ensembles and his own band, The Thurston Moore Group. His solo records include Trees Outside the Academy (2007), Demolished Thoughts (2011), By the Fire (2020) and, most recently, screen time (2021).

Warren Smith Legendary drummer Warren Smith is an original co-founding member of Max Roach's percussion group M'boom and co-founder of The Composers Workshop Ensemble. He also ran the loft performance space Studio Wis, from the 1970s-1980s. He has performed with a wide array of artists including Sam Rivers, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Julius Hemphill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Charles Tolliver, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans. He also accompanied a number of Pop artists such as Janis Joplin, Van Morrisson, The Fugs, Aretha Franklin and Nat King Cole.  A classically trained musician, he has also worked with composer Lou Harrisson and spent many years toiling in Broadway orchestra pits. He has been a teacher since 1958.

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