Jeff Hunt is an American music producer, curator, and publisher. He is the founder of Table of the Elements, an independent record label established in 1993 that focuses on experimental, minimalist, and avant-garde music. Through the label and its related imprints, Hunt has released or produced recordings by artists including Albert Ayler, Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, John Fahey, John Cale, Pauline Oliveros, Mike Kelley, Captain Beefheart, La Monte Young, Laurie Spielgel, Christian Marclay, Éliane Radigue, Gastr del Sol, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Fennesz, Keiji Haino, and Robert Longo, as well as projects featuring members of Sonic Youth, Swans, the Velvet Underground, and The Cure.
Hunt worked closely with Tony Conrad for decades, producing archival and contemporary projects related to Conrad’s film, sound, and intermedia work. Artists associated with the label, including Conrad and Rhys Chatham, have appeared in programs at institutions such as Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Lincoln Center, and Pace Gallery, in contexts that helped to reframe late-20th-century minimalism and experimental music. Coverage of Hunt and Table of the Elements has appeared in publications including Artforum, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Frieze, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In 2003, Table of the Elements released the first complete edition of Laurie Spiegel’s Harmonices Mundi. An excerpt of the piece had been chosen decades earlier by Carl Sagan for the Voyager Golden Record.
Hunt also produces What the Pictures Sound Like, an audiovisual project built around the photographic archive of Art Kane, the American photojournalist known for Harlem 1958 (A Great Day In Harlem). The project integrates live experimental music by Reeves Gabrels and Kane’s son Jonathan with projections of Kane’s portraits of cultural figures such as Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Louis Armstrong, and Bob Dylan.
Hunt is collaborating with neuroscientist and composer Dave Soldier (David Sulzer) on a forthcoming book about Johannes Kepler, serving as its editor and publisher. The work grows out of Soldier’s research into the interplay of music, mathematics, and perception.
He also makes several appearances in Tyler Hubby’s award-winning documentary feature, Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present.
