Mark Guiliana

Born in 1980 in Florham Park, New Jersey, Mark Guiliana has since the early 2000s developed a career situated between contemporary jazz, rock, funk, and electronic music. Trained at William Paterson University, he first came to notice within the group of bassist Avishai Cohen, with whom he recorded several albums, while also playing alongside Meshell Ndegeocello, Dhafer Youssef, Gretchen Parlato or Donny McCaslin. Mark Guiliana also leads his own projects in parallel, Heernt and Beat Music, where he explores a dense rhythmic writing, electronic textures, and a highly mobile relationship between improvisation and composition. This double orientation is reflected in his records under his own name, from a more acoustic facet with Family First in 2015 and Jersey in 2017, to more hybrid formats such as A Form of Truth in 2013, Beat Music! Beat Music! Beat Music! in 2019, The Sound of Listening in 2022, Mischief in 2023 and MARK in 2024. In a duo with Brad Mehldau, under the name Mehliana, Mark Guiliana also released Taming the Dragon in 2014, a project centered on improvisation and electric forms. His playing, precise and highly articulated, emphasizes contrasts, motifs, and the flow between pulse, melody, and sonic matter. Mark Guiliana is also heard on David Bowie’s Blackstar, released in 2016.