Louis Belogenis, billed on nearly all of his own records and in most press as "Louie" Belogenis, is a tenor and soprano saxophonist who came up in the New York avant-garde of the old East Village. He is self-taught, and his music carries the influence of Buddhism, poetry, film, and dance alongside jazz: he spent four years as a member of Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre company before establishing himself on the downtown jazz scene. He became close with saxophonist and composer John Zorn, who picked out Belogenis's first saxophone with him at a used-instrument shop on Third Avenue and 11th Street; Zorn later produced two of his leader dates.

Belogenis met drummer Rashied Ali in the late 1980s while playing in a band led by drummer William Hooker. Ali heard him and invited him to visit his Soho studio, on the site of the former club Ali's Alley. The meeting led to Prima Materia, a collective the two men co-led with pianist Greg Murphy, bassist Joe Gallant, and alto saxophonist Allan Chase, formed to perform the most demanding late repertoire of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. The group's first recording, Peace on Earth (Music of John Coltrane) (1994, Knitting Factory Works), used bassist William Parker rather than Gallant; Prima Materia then recorded Coltrane's Meditations and Ayler's Bells live at the Knitting Factory in 1995 and 1996, respectively, with bassist Wilber Morris subbing for a 1997 Vision Festival performance that later surfaced on an AUM Fidelity compilation. A posthumous studio-and-archival release, Configurations, followed in 2009 after Ali's death.

Ali and Belogenis also recorded as a duo. Rings of Saturn, cut August 9 and 19, 1997 at Ali's own Survival Studios and released in 1999 on Knitting Factory Records, reportedly began when Ali, after building the studio with money from a bicycle-accident settlement, wanted to test its acoustics; the session grew into a full record, with a version of "Saturn," from Coltrane's Interstellar Space, included as the pair's explicit tribute to that record. The duo expanded to a trio with bassist Wilber Morris for Live at Tonic, recorded and released in January 2001 on the Japanese DIW label, taped live at the Manhattan club Tonic.

Alongside the Ali collaborations, Belogenis has led a run of his own groups since the early 1990s. He recorded a duo album with cellist Michelle Kinney, Knot Other Than Love (1990, Aphid Records), and turns up on record with William Hooker's Sextet (1992-93) and the noise-rock/free-improv band God Is My Co-Pilot (1993-94) around the same period. His quartet Twice Told Tales, with saxophonist Tony Malaby, bassist Trevor Dunn, and drummer Ryan Sawyer, recorded its only album in 2002 (released 2003, DIW), with John Zorn credited as associate producer. He co-led Unbroken (2005, Tick Tock) with bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz and drummer Kenny Wollesen, and formed the long-running Flow Trio with bassist Joe Morris and drummer Charles Downs, documented on The Flow (recorded 2004, released 2007, Ayler Records), Rejuvenation (2009, ESP-Disk'), Set Theory: Live at the Stone (recorded 2009, released 2011, Ayler Records) and, with guest tenor saxophonist Joe McPhee, Winter Garden (recorded January 2020, released 2021, ESP-Disk').

Belogenis's other working group with Sunny Murray and bassist Michael Bisio, billed as the Louie Belogenis Trio, recorded Tiresias at Eastside Sound in May 2008; the album, released in 2011 on Porter Records, carries a dedication "in loving memory of John Belogenis (May 25, 1921 - December 2, 2009) and Rashid Ali (July 1, 1933 - August 12, 2009)," his father and his old collaborator, both of whom passed within weeks of each other. In 2015 he assembled a one-off quartet for Blue Buddha (Tzadik), with trumpeter Dave Douglas, bassist Bill Laswell, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey; John Zorn again served as executive producer. Belogenis and the Twice Told Tales rhythm section of Trevor Dunn and Ryan Sawyer reunited as the trio Terton for Outer, Inner, Secret (recorded July 2022, released 2023, Tzadik). He has also recorded with his own trio-plus-trumpet group Exuberance, alongside trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr., bassist Hilliard Greene, and drummer Michael Wimberly, on The Other Shore (2003, Boxholder Records, dedicated to the memory of Wilber Morris) and Live at Vision Festival (recorded 2003, released 2004, Ayler Records).

Belogenis's playing draws on both the harmonic drive of late Coltrane and the raw, vocalized tone of Albert Ayler; a Wikipedia review of Rings of Saturn credits him with combining the "structural focus of Coltrane and the tonal elasticity of Ayler" rather than simply imitating either one. His work with Prima Materia and with Rashied Ali directly, first as a duo and then in the Live at Tonic trio, positioned him as a direct musical heir to that Coltrane-Ayler-Ali lineage, while Ali himself reportedly encouraged Belogenis to bring in outside influences, among them modern-classical composers, rather than stay inside the tradition he was inheriting. His extramusical grounding in Buddhist practice and in Richard Foreman's experimental theater work also shapes his output, most explicitly on the Buddhism-themed Blue Buddha (2015) and Terton, whose name refers to a discoverer of hidden Tibetan Buddhist teachings.