Pamela Z
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| Pamela Z | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Pamela Brooks |
| Born | 1956 |
| Origin |  Colorado, United States |
| Website | PamelaZ.com |
Pamela Z (born Pamela Brooks, 1956) is an American composer, performer, and audio artist who works primarily with her voice and live electronic processing.
Raised in the Denver area, the African American Z received her bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied classical voice. After performing throughout Colorado as a rock musician under the name Pam Brooks, in 1985 she moved to San Francisco, where her experiments with live digital delay vocal processing began leading her down a different artistic path, and she changed her name to Pamela Z.
In performance today, she typically processes her live voice through MAX MSP software on a PowerBook, combining operatic bel canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with percussion objects, spoken word, and sampled sounds. Z has performed in such festivals as Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center in New York, the Interlink Festival in Japan, Other Minds in San Francisco, and La Biennale di Venezia in Venice, Italy.
Z has been commissioned from such sources as the Bang on a Can Allstars, Ethel, The California EAR Unit, the Robin Cox Ensemble, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and Orchestra of St. Luke's. Many of her signature pieces are collected on the 2004 Starkland release, A Delay is Better. She is a member of the electroacoustic ensemble sensorChip and the interdisciplinary performance ensemble The Qube Chix, both based in San Francisco. Z has received numerous awards, including: the Guggenheim Fellowship; the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts; the Creative Capital Fund; the ASCAP Music Award; and the NEA and Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship.
