Z’EV (Stefan Joel Weisser) was born in Los Angeles in 1951, learned to play drums at the age of 3 and – after an early interest in percussion music – studied 1967-69 at Fluxus the California Institute of the Arts, mainly with the Fluxus poet Emmett Williams and the sculptor Claes Oldenburg. He publishes poetry under the name of S. Weisser and uses the pseudonym Z’EV for his percussion work. Since the mid-1980s, he has returned to a more mallet-oriented style of percussion; he resides in London.