Joel
Davel
Percussionist, composer and instrument builder in Oakland, California. New music made with live gesture — on marimba, on invented instruments, and on electronics.
To be a vehicle for new sounds and new ideas, delivered to an audience in a way that is visceral and corporeal.
landscape · you performing
Photo — Kegan Marling
Upcoming
2026 – 2027-
Sep 25 – Oct 112026Now playing
King Lear
Z Space · Steindler Stage · San Francisco
Paul Dresher's original score, performed live throughout the production by the Dresher | Davel Invented Instrument Duo — Dresher on Hurdy Grande and keyboard, Davel on Marimba Lumina and percussion. A thirty-person staging directed by Michael Socrates Moran, with J Jha as Lear and Rinde Eckert as the Fool. An Oakland Theater Project and New Performance Traditions co-production.
Tickets and details -
Apr 172027
A Buchla Birthday Tribute
Museum of Music Technology · Harleysville, Pennsylvania
A day marking what would have been Don Buchla's ninetieth birthday, with Ezra Buchla and Ami Radunskaya. Davel gives the afternoon lecture Voltage and Vision: Twenty Years inside the Buchla Universe, and plays the evening concert on Marimba Lumina Gold, Lightning and Thunder.
Tickets and details -
April2027
Dresher | Davel Invented Instrument Duo
Dates and venue to be announced
Quadrachord, Hurdy Grande, Marimba Lumina and Buchla Lightning — two performers and a stage full of instruments that exist nowhere else.
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May 4 – 82027
Musical Explorers
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall · New York
Carnegie Hall's education concerts for young audiences, performing with Vân-Ánh Võ's Blood Moon Orchestra.
Work
Ensembles · dance · theaterDresher | Davel Invented Instrument Duo
Duo with Paul Dresher
A duo built around instruments invented and built by the two of them: the fifteen-foot Quadrachord, the ten-foot motorized Hurdy Grande, the Marimba Lumina and the Buchla Lightning. Carnegie's Zankel Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Sydney Conservatorium, the Canberra International Music Festival, and the Beloselski-Belozerski Palace in St. Petersburg.
The duoVân-Ánh Võ & the Blood Moon Orchestra
Percussion · Marimba Lumina
Vietnamese traditional instruments meeting hip-hop, jazz and electronics, with an ensemble drawn from immigrant musical traditions. Stanford Live, Princeton, the HOZO Festival in Vietnam, and Carnegie Hall's Musical Explorers.
Paul Dresher Electro-Acoustic Band
Percussion · electronics
Many years of premieres with the band, realizing new work by Terry Riley, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, David Lang, John Luther Adams, Roger Reynolds, Martin Bresnick, Ingram Marshall, Sebastian Currier and Steven Mackey.
dNaga Dance Company
Music director · composer
A long collaboration with choreographer Claudine Naganuma, scoring Unbound, Reveal, Shaking and Shocking, Freedom House, Lovely Gibberish and Tastes Like Bitterness, Moves Like Love, and touring to Japan, Hawaii, New York and San Francisco.
dNagaTheater
Actor-percussionist · composer
Onstage and in costume as often as in the pit. The Tempest and Peter and the Starcatcher at South Coast Repertory; All's Well That Ends Well at California Shakespeare Theater, co-composed with Gina Leishman; and now King Lear at Z Space.
Opera
Percussion · electronic sound
Premieres of Max Duykers' Apricots of Andujar and Both Eyes Open with tenor John Duykers, and Henze's El Cimarrón with guitarist David Tanenbaum.
Instruments
Built, designed, supportedMarimba Lumina
Don Buchla's electronic mallet instrument, developed with Davel and Mark Goldstein — Davel on circuit board design, beta testing and sound design. When production ended, he took it on: Absolute Deviation has built and supported the instrument since 2008.
Absolute DeviationBuchla USA
Twenty-plus years alongside Don Buchla, and lead designer since. Every Music Easel project since 2013, and the printed circuit board layout for the Marimba Lumina, the Piano Bar, Lightning III and the entire 200e series — including the 208C, the 218e v3, the AuxCard, the iProgramCard and Program Manager.
BuchlaWhy build them
The instruments come out of the music, not the other way around. They exist to find new ways of interacting with sound — and when they leave the shop, they let someone else do the same.
Press
“Percussionist Joel Davel blew everyone away with his virtuosic improvisation on the Marimba Lumina.”
The Wall Street Journal — Meet the Makers, Lincoln Center
“Davel's inventiveness was endless. At times the wands became mallets, beating the skin of a virtual drum.”
San Francisco Classical Voice — Nick Rich, 2019
“Davel was as much a dancer as Green — he looks like a hyperactive magician casting abracadabra spells into the ether.”
Symphony Space — with choreographer Allyson Green
“Davel's marimba combines with drummer Peter Valsamis to create a Brazilian texture that is magnetic.”
Audiophile Audition — Robbie Gerson, Essential Curvature
Contact
Please use the right doorBuchla instruments
Technical questions about the Easel, the 200e series or any Buchla product go to Buchla USA support — they can help far faster than I can.