HUG featuring Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley, and Noah Georgeson

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Singer-songwriter and visual artist Devendra Banhart is an exceptionally versatile, idiosyncratic voice in the contemporary alternative music world. He rose to prominence as a central leader of the creative indie-folk and “freak folk” music movements during the early 2000s. His diverse, multicultural upbringing, both in the US and Venezuela, profoundly shaped his eclectic, genre-blending musical style. Banhart’s early discography is characterized by its minimalist lo-fi production, surrealist lyrics, and nomadic acoustics. Over subsequent decades, his sonic palette expanded to include distinct elements of psych-rock, Tropicalia, traditional folk, glam rock, and electronic music on celebrated albums like Rejoicing in the Hands, Cripple Crow, and Mala. Recognized for his unique, heavy vibrato vocals and bohemian persona, Banhart sings fluently in both English and Spanish languages. Beyond his prolific music career, he is a dedicated visual artist, exhibiting his complex drawings globally. He continues to record, write, tour, and collaborate, continually exploring new avenues for expression.

Gyan Riley won his first guitar in a raffle when he was 12 years old, and it soon became difficult for his parents to wrestle it from his hands. He first immersed himself in classical guitar, gaining a scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In his twenties he turned to composition, and has since written music for the Kronos Quartet, New Music USA, the Carnegie Hall Corporation, the American Composers Forum, and the New York Guitar Festival, as well as documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Riley has performed with Zakir Hussain, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Bill Frisell, the Kronos Quartet, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Devendra Banhart, Julian Lage, Nico Muhly, Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Arooj Aftab, and his father, the renowned composer Terry Riley. He performed with Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter for the 50th Anniversary of Saturday Night Live, and is a core member of Paul Simon’s band for the 2025 US Tour: A Quiet Celebration. Riley has eight of his own CD titles and dozens of collaborative recordings. Winter Sun, his first album as a vocalist, was released in 2025.

Noah Georgeson has a knack for hearing what a song needs. It is not a style that defines the California producer and composer’s approach to music as much as a sensibility. He likens it to the Japanese phrase wabi-sabi, meaning “beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” Collaborators look to him “to mess up the sound of a record,” he says, and surface those weird moments, textures, and signatures that often surprise and stick around in your mind, becoming singular and timeless. An in-demand producer, mixer, and musician, Georgeson was part of the 2000s indie-folk movement, marked by breakthrough records with Joanna Newsom, his former bandmate, Vetiver, Mason Jennings, Little Joy, and Devendra Banhart, a creative partnership that flourishes to this day. His work has seen recognition from the Grammys, Latin Grammys, and JUNO Awards, plus an Emmy nomination for the theme music to the Netflix series Narcos.