Annie Gosfield (born September 11, 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a New York composer who specializes in using detuned or out of tune samples and industrial noises. Her work often contains improvisation and frequently uses extended techniques and/or altered musical instruments. She won a 2012 Berlin Prize.
Contents |
Her work includes large-scale compositions, chamber music, electronic music, video projects, and music for dance. She uses traditional notation, improvisation, and extended techniques to explore a sound world that eliminates the boundaries between music and noise. Her music is often inspired by the inherent beauty of non-musical sounds, such as machines, destroyed pianos, warped 78 rpm records, and detuned radios. She often works in close collaboration with musicians, in order to emphasize the unique qualities of each performer.
Gosfield's compositions have been performed internationally by The Bang on a Can Allstars, Agon Orchestra, Joan Jeanrenaud, Fred Frith, Felix Fan, Roger Kleier, Blair McMillen, William Winant, the FLUX Quartet, the Miami String Quartet, The Silesian String Quartet, So Percussion, Talujon Percussion, Newband (on the Harry Partch instruments) and many others, at festivals including Warsaw Autumn, ISCM World Music Days, Bang on a Can Marathon, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Festival Musique Actuelle, Wien Modern, OtherMinds, Spoleto Festival USA, Company Week, Taktlos, and three "Radical New Jewish Culture" festivals curated by John Zorn.
Gosfield has composed a site-specific work for a factory in Germany, collaborated on installations with artist Manuel Ocampo, and created a video for an imaginary orchestra of destroyed instruments. She has worked with many choreographers, including Karole Armitage and Susan Marshall. Her music for dance has been featured at the Venice Biennale, the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Teatro Olimpico (Rome), The Joyce Theater, Jacob's Pillow, and the Duke Theater on 42nd Street.
Her work has been profiled on National Public Radio, and in articles in The Wire (magazine), Contemporary Music Review, Avant Magazine, Strings Magazine, as well as the book “Music and the Creative Spirit”. She has received recent fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, McKnight Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Siemens Foundation.
Her music is featured on three solo CD’s on Tzadik Records. Her third release, Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites, features work scored for solo violin accompanied by satellite transmissions, as well as solo and chamber works performed by Joan Jeanrenaud and the Flux Quartet. Her previous Tzadik CD, "Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery" features two pieces inspired by her 1999 residency in the factories of Nuremberg, Germany. "Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires", her first solo release for Tzadik, focuses on her work for detuned piano.
Gosfield was the Milhaud Professor of composition at Mills College in 2003 and 2005, visiting lecturer at Princeton University in 2007,and was a visiting artist at Cal Arts in 1999.
Gosfield's writing on music has been featured in four essays published by the New York Times' "TimeSelect", and her essay "Fiddling With Sputnik" was published in Arcana II, edited by John Zorn. She is a periodic contributor to "The Score", the New York Times blog where composers discuss their work and the issues involved in creating music in the 21st century.[1]
She is the recipient of the Berlin Prize in Music Composition and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin for Spring 2012.