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Asa Horvitz was raised in a family of musicians in rural California. He later studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton, and had formative encounters with the NYC DIY/underground scene, the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, and post-dance. In his performances, Horvitz combines elements of choreography, theatre, visual art, and music/sound to set up conditions so that the audience, confronted by paradox, begins to imagine for themselves. His work has been presented internationally, at venues such as deSingel, BOZAR, Het HEM, Muziekgebouw, deSchool, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, brutWien, The New Museum (NYC), Public Records (NYC), and in many underground spaces. Collaborations include the VR Opera SONGS FOR A PASSERBY (dir. Celine Daemen) which won the Lion for Immersive Projects in the Venice Biennale in 2023, as well as with Scott Gibbons/Romeo Castellucci. His record GHOST (with Carmen Quill, Wayne Horvitz, and Ariadne Randall) was released in 2025 to critical acclaim. Asa graduated from DAS Theatre in Amsterdam in 2021. He is a former Camargo, Fulbright, and MacDowell fellow. Since 2013 has studied and practiced various ways of working with dreams and inner images and is a certified practitioner of Embodied Imagination. 

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Asa Horvitz was raised in a family of musicians in rural Northern California and began playing in bands and making records and, in parallel, theatre and dance performances. His parents were involved with a Zen Center and he began formal training as a teenager. He later studied composition with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University (BA High Honors), where he also studied medieval music, theater, dance/performance theory, and co-founded the collective No Face. He later lived in Warsaw, Poland, and in New York City where he was active in the underground/DIY scene, worked various jobs, and studied psychoanalysis and ways of working with dreams. 

His artistic output between 2011-2019 defies easy categorization, and is characterized by long-form experimental processes embedded in specific locations, sonic richness and visual spareness, personal narratives, references to current and historical events, art history, and an interest in the conditions under which things become things rather than in things themselves. A year-long performance project in collaboration with a Zen Center in which performers and visual artists worked with Zen Koans, a performance/concert in memory of a dead friend released as an album and website; a video installation in collaboration with 50+ members of an American religious singing community; a theatre play freely inspired by Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle; a lecture performance on mass shootings and Aby Warburg ending in a game of baseball. Each work tried to create conditions under which spectators, confronted by paradox, began to imagine for themselves. These experiences led to a fascination with choreographic strategies as a way to organize irreconcilable opposites, a need to work where rigorous performative structures and more sensitive and slippery processes overlap, a desire to create performances that are finely attuned yet ultimately overwhelming. 

Asa is currently at work on THE SAVED NIGHT, a performance cycle begun at DAS Theatre/DAS Arts in Amsterdam that has been presented in Europe and North America. Each chapter – performances accompanied by other media (booklets, vinyl records, websites) – tries to set up conditions for spectators to have an experience of expanding beyond a narrow “me”, to fall into a raw field of being with (not only human) others. 

Horvitz’s works have been presented internationally, including at Het HEM, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Frascati, de School (NL), deSingel (BE), Musiktheatretage Wien (AT), brutWien (AT), The New Museum, Microscope Gallery, The Brick, Public Records, LaMaMa ETC (NYC), Living Arts (Tulsa, OK), CounterPULSE (SF), Labirynt Gallery Lublin, and in many other cultural institutions and underground contexts. His work has been featured in publications such as MASKA (SI) and WNYC’s New Sounds. Recent research support/residencies include Muzeum Susch (CH), ImPulsTanz, CAMPUS/Muncipal Theatre of Porto, Goethe Institut Hong Kong, and ELIAS (SI). 

As a musician/composer he has released eight albums, from 2005-2024, on Het HEM, Shatter Your Leaves, Hope For the Tape Deck, and other experimental labels. Collaborations include Carmen Quill, Scott Gibbons/Romeo Castellucci (as contributor to music with Gibbons on the 2014 Ubu-winning GO DOWN, MOSES), Wayne Horvitz, Pavel Zustiak, Lukasz Korczak, Adrian Knight, Anthony Vine, Anna Webber, Ben Seretan, Kalup Linzy, and many more. He has received numerous awards including Fulbright, Camargo, and MacDowell fellowships. In 2023 he composed the VR Opera SONGS FOR A PASSERBY (dir. Celine Daemen) which won the Lion in the Venice Biennale for Immersive Projects and has toured worldwide. His record GHOST (with Carmen Quill, Wayne Horvitz, and Ariadne Randall; music from the performance by the same name) was released in January 2025 to critical acclaim from the BBC, NPR, and other outlets. 

Asa has studied various ways of working with dreams and inner images since 2013, and is a certified practitioner of Embodied Imagination. He has developed experimental methods of working with performers in a variety of contexts, including on artistic exchanges in Indonesia, South India, and Malaysia (supported by an RSF Social Finance grant). He moved permanently to Europe in 2019. He currently mentors at ArtEZ in Arnhem and is a guest teacher at universities in Poland and the United States. Since 2024, he directs the small record label Celestial Excursions, based in New York. He is a former Fulbright, MacDowell, and Camargo Fellow (performing arts jury 2020-2022).