Hannah Marks

BIOGRAPHY

Hannah Marks is a bassist, composer, and educator living in New York City. Marks’ debut album, Outsider, Outlier, is an explosive rendering of her search for belonging and empowerment. A nod to her love for punk, noise and free improvisation, Outsider, Outlier releases on Out Of Your Head Records on October 20, 2023.

She has performed at festivals like the Detroit Jazz Festival, Hyde Park Jazz Festival, 80-35 Music Festival, Iowa City Jazz Festival and Indy Jazz Festival. In addition to her experimental rock project Outsider, Outlier, Marks also leads a jazz group, Hannah Marks Quartet.

As a side-woman, Marks has been described as having “a fresh, modern, and original approach to playing the bass” by Marcus Printup. Marks has played bass for Geoffrey Keezer, Nasheet Waits, Terri Lyne Carrington, Anna Webber, Miles Okazaki, Ingrid Jensen, Kalia Vandever, Matt Wilson, Ted Nash, Morgan Guerin and Marcus Printup. Marks’ discography includes playing on Geoffrey Keezer’s Grammy award winning composition “Refuge”, Kristen Lee Sergeant’s Falling with saxophonist Ted Nash, and Heartland Trio’s debut album Year One.

Marks is also passionate about sharing her love of music with a range of communities. She has led masterclasses on music and entrepreneurship at colleges across the country, including Brown University, Indiana University, and University of Denver.

Since moving to New York, Marks has been an artist-in-residence at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in New Jersey and a curator for Green Lung Studio in Brooklyn. She is teaching on faculty at The Spence School.

Marks is a MacDowell Fellow (2023), an alum of the Stanford Jazz Workshop Mentor Fellow program (2022-23), the Woodshed Network (2021), Betty Carter Jazz Ahead (2019) and the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music (2018).

An alum of Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, Marks studied with Walter Smith III, Kurt Muroki and Jeremy Allen. She was a member of IU’s top jazz group, the Plummer Jazz Quintet, led by Walter Smith III. She hails from Des Moines, IA.