Adam talks about the crisis in U.S. science and higher education that is unfolding now, due to the multi-pronged assault on both by the second Trump administration. This episode was recorded on June 19, 2025. It’s a special one-off episode of Deep Convection, not part of The Sumner Files.

Media articles mentioned in the episode include:

New York Times article by James Glanz.

Guardian op-ed by Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann and Brian Nosek on the “Gold Standard” executive order.

After this episode was recorded but before it was released, the New York Times published this article that makes many of the same points about the damage being done to U.S. science, through the lens of Harvard.

Photo by Alon Koppel.

Connie Burg, aka China Burg, Don Burg, and Lucy Hamilton, had never played the guitar before she joined Mars. But that didn’t stop her from developing a uniquely original style that became a defining feature of Mars’ sound, and that in turn influenced all the No Wave music that came afterwards. Connie went on to learn another brand new instrument, the bass clarinet, for Sumner’s opera, John Gavanti, and then she kept playing it in her later projects, including Don King (with Mark Cunningham and others), The Drowning of Lucy Hamilton (with Lydia Lunch), Gerry Miles (with Melissa Weaver and Alan Licht), and The Love Dogs (with Andy Salcius). Though Connie and Sumner didn’t play music together post-Gavanti, they stayed friends ever after, and her face is prominently featured in a number of his paintings. Connie recounts some great new stories to Adam, such as when Sumner got her and three other friends to form a bridge club, meeting weekly, so that he could paint them while they played the card game. Connie is a No Wave legend, an important person in Sumner’s life, and a critically important contributor to The Sumner Files. This interview was recorded in December 2024.

In Adam’s memory, Sumner’s life is divided into the pre-Sue and Sue eras, with Sue being Susan Lehman, aka Sue Crane, aka Aunt Sue to Adam and his sister. Sue came originally from California, moved around in her youth, wound up in New York by the mid-1980s, and met Sumner sometime around 1990, right when he moved up to the Catskills for a few months to take care of his dying father. Not too long after that, they moved in together to her place in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Sue worked as a middle school earth science teacher, Sumner painted apartments, and they lived happily ever after (in spite of being very broke at the beginning), until Sumner’s death in 2003. During this whole time, they worked together on Sumner’s research project about the painter Edward Simmons, and eventually published four co-authored articles about Simmons. Sue talks with Adam about meeting Sumner, his music, his art, his personality, and their life together. At the end, she tells a story about the talent show he made her whole family do on New Year’s Eve Y2K. This interview was mostly recorded in August 2024, except for the last bit which was recorded in May 2025 (and the musical interludes, which were recorded earlier, by Sumner).

Photo by Sue’s sister Cathy McIntyre, taken at Sue & Sumner’s wedding, in 1995.

Cynthia Sobel, born Cynthia Schoenwetter, is Adam’s mother, and Sumner’s sister. So she knew Sumner from the very beginning of his life to the end, and there’s no one else alive who remembers the things about him that she does. She talks at length about their parents, Charles and Sylvia Schoenwetter, and their childhoods in Elmhurst, Queens — essential context for understanding Sumner’s life and art — as well as her memories and reflections about Sumner as an adult, and their relationship. One example: in 1963, Sumner took Cynthia and her husband (Adam’s dad, Gerry Sobel) to see Bob Dylan, whom they hadn’t heard of yet, perform in Carnegie Hall! Cynthia and Sumner both inherited artistic temperaments from their parents, and shared a passion particularly for the visual arts. (Their father, Charles, was a music teacher; Cynthia talks about how Charles didn’t succeed at teaching music to either Sumner or her, though Sumner learned it anyway, playing the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, to their father’s dismay.) Cynthia had a long career as a designer of women’s suits, with her own line (name on the label) at Herbert Grossman. When she retired, she took up painting, connecting her to Sumner even more. You can find some of her older paintings on cynthiasobel.com, and some more recent ones on instagram where she’s @cynthia.sobel.5. This interview was recorded in September 2024.

As the front man in DNA, Arto Lindsay was one of the core No Wave figures from the start, and he and Sumner were good friends from the mid-1970s, when Arto arrived in NYC (along with Mark Cunningham and Connie Burg, from Eckerd College in Florida), into the 1980s and beyond. Arto played on Sumner’s opera record John Gavanti, and in the early 1980s Arto, Sumner and Rudolph Grey formed a visual art trio, signing their separately-made works with the single name Jack Texas (with which Sumner continued to sign his own paintings for the rest of his life, long after the trio disbanded). Arto has had an amazing career since then, collaborating with a wide range of musicians and visual artists both. His projects have included the Golden Palominos, Lounge Lizards, Ambitious Lovers, and many solo records. He’s been a record producer for many other artists, especially (but not limited to) Brazilian ones. Arto himself grew up in Brazil and lives there currently, and his own music combines sounds from that country with no wave “skronk” — a term coined to describe his guitar playing — and many other diverse influences. Arto talks with Adam about Sumner, his art, their relationship, and how much he benefited from Sumner’s encouragement in those early days. This interview was recorded in July 2024.

In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with painter David Reed. David’s paintings have been shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe from the 1970s to the present, in venues including the Guggenheim, Gagosian New York and Basel, Neues Museum Nürnberg, Häusler Contemporary, Zurich, and most recently at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris. David’s work is abstract, and as critic John Yao wrote in 2020, ““At the core of Reed’s project is the brushstroke.” David got his start in 1960s and 1970s New York, and one can see the influence of graffiti, for example, in his work. During those early days, David and Sumner were friends and roommates for around ten years, starting when they were both students of Milton Resnick at the New York Studio School, in a loft apartment downstairs from Nancy Arlen. Adam learned about David through internet research on Resnick and the Studio School, contacted him, and that led to this amazing conversation. David’s memories fill many critical gaps in Sumner’s story during the decade, roughly Sumner’s 20s, leading up to and including the formation of Mars. Among them, David sheds light on Sumner’s relationship with Resnick, and also with composer Morton Feldman, who was Dean of the Studio School during Sumner and David’s time there. David’s account shows how Sumner’s art (and David’s own) grew out of their apprenticeship with a couple of the most important artists of the mid-20th century — Resnick and Feldman — and how the environment they were in blurred the lines between music and painting at a time when abstraction and “materiality” were important in both. You can learn more about David’s work and see his art at davidreedstudio.com.

Photo by Pamela Reed.

In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with Lydia Lunch! Lydia is a singer, poet, writer, actress, and self-empowerment speaker. She got her start as the leader, singer and guitarist of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, one of the four bands to appear on the compilation No New York, and moved on from there to a long career in which she’s managed to maintain the raw intensity and outsider quality that she started with. Her later projects include the bands Beirut Slump, 8 Eyed Spy, among many others, and then a long solo career, as well as many other bands and collaborations, doing music and spoken word. She’s also an author: her books include Paradoxia, The Gun is Loaded, Lydia Lunch Will Work for Drugs, and So Real it Hurts. Lydia has also acted in many films, and in 2019 Beth B, a filmmaker who started with Lydia in the no wave scene, released a film about her, entitled Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over. Adam and Lydia talk about Sumner, and Lydia encourages Adam to do more with this project than just a podcast. You can find more about Lydia at lydia-lunch.net. This conversation was recorded in August 2024.

Photo of Lydia by Jasmine Hirst.

In this episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with photographer and graphic designer Julia Gorton about her experiences in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s, and they share memories of Sumner. With Rick Brown, Julia produced the fanzine Beat It in the late 1970s, and that got her into shows free so that she could photograph people at CBGBs and Max’s and so on. She became friends with the no wave bands, and with Sumner in particular, joining adventures with him and Rudolph Grey, such as interviewing catholic schoolgirls in Brooklyn, and recording them for posterity. Many years later, after a long career as a designer and educator, Julia pulled her old photos out of the drawer, and they became part of the revival of interest in no wave. Her photos, including several of Sumner, appeared in Thurston Moore and Byron Coley’s book No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York 1976-1980, and then she started putting them on social media and showing them in galleries. More recently she has published her own book, Nowhere New York, with new original essays by many important participants from the time as well as many beautiful photos, and re-released all the issues of Beat It in an anthology. These volumes, and Julia’s photos, are among the most definitive, compelling and beautiful visual documents of the no wave scene in general and Sumner in particular during this time. You can find Julia’s books, t-shirts, and more at www.juliagorton.com. This conversation was recorded in July 2024.

In this first proper episode of the Sumner Files, Adam talks with Mark Cunningham, the bass player in Mars and one of two surviving members of the band. Mark also played brass instruments on John Gavanti, and that record was released on Mark’s own label, Hyrax. Mark has had a long career since then, with bands including Don King, Raeo, Convolution, Bestia Farida, and Blood Quartet, as well as two recent solo albums, Odd Songs and Blue Mystery. Adam and Mark talk about Mark’s life and career trajectory, including a detailed chronology of Mars from start to end. You can find much more about Mark’s music and other works at markcunningham.cat and much of the music itself at markcunningham1.bandcamp.com. This conversation was recorded in July 2024.

This episode launches a new series about the artist and musician Sumner Crane (1946-2003). Scientist Adam Sobel — Sumner’s nephew, and the host of this series as well as the podcast Deep Convection, out of which it grows — introduces the whole thing, explaining who Sumner was, why he (Adam) is doing this, and how it came to be.

Image credit: collage with photo of Sumner Crane, by Julia Gorton.