EXTENDED BIOGRAPHY

Annie Gosfield lives in New York City and divides her time between performing on piano and sampler with her own group and composing for many ensembles and soloists. Her work often explores the inherent beauty of non–musical sounds, and is inspired by diverse sources such as machines, destroyed pianos, warped 78 records, and detuned radios. She uses traditional notation, improvisation, and extended techniques to create a sound world that eliminates the boundaries between music and noise, while emphasizing the unique qualities of each performer. A 2012 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and the recipient of the 2008 Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ prestigious “Grants to Artists” award, Gosfield’s essays on composition have been published by the New York Times and featured in the book “Arcana II”.

Gosfield was a visiting lecturer of composition at Princeton University in 2007, and held the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, in 2003 and 2005. She has received fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, McKnight Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Siemens Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and the Djerassi Foundation, and has received grants and awards from the NEA, Meet the Composer, the MAP Fund, the Argosy Foundation, American Composers Forum, the Jerome Foundation, the American Music Center, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, U.S. Artists at International Festivals, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Argosy Foundation, and the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, among others. She studied composition at the University of Southern California and North Texas State University, and studied piano with jazz pianist Bernard Peiffer and Horowitz protégé Alexander Fiorillo.

Dedicated to working closely with performers, Gosfield has created new works in collaboration with musicians such as ex-Kronos cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, pianist Lisa Moore, the Miami String Quartet, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Annie's music has been performed and/or commissioned by some of the finest interpreters of contemporary music, including The Flux Quartet, The Eclipse Quartet, The Miami String Quartet, The Penderecki String Quartet, The Silesian String Quartet, The California Ear Unit, ROVA, Newband (on The Harry Partch instruments), Relache, Talujon Percussion, So Percussion, The Pearls Before Swine Experience, Present Music, Zeitgeist, The European Music Project, Felix Fan, Fred Frith, Frances-Marie Uitti, Stephen Gosling, William Winant, Marco Cappelli, George Kentros, David Cossin, Andrew Russo, Blair McMillen, Guy Livingston, Sarah Cahill, Anthony de Mare, Chris Cutler, Avian Orchestra, Agon Orchestra, Spit Orchestra, The Crosstown Ensemble, the West Australia Symphony Orchestra's New Music Ensemble conducted by Roger Smalley, and many others.

Festivals that have featured Gosfield's music include Warsaw Autumn, The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival (as composer in residence), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (U.K.), The Venice Beinnale, Bang on a Can Festival (Lincoln Center, New York), ISCM World Music Days (Luxembourg), Festival Musique Actuelle (Victoriaville, Canada), Musique Action (Nancy, France), The Taktlos Festival (Zurich and Basel), Company Week (New York), Tampere Jazz Happening (Finland), Wien Modern, The Israel Festival, The Adelaide Festival, Muzik3 (San Diego), OtherMinds (San Francisco), the Schleswig–Holstein Festival (Germany); Settembre Musica (Milan), Time of Music Festival (Viitasaari, Finland), MATA (New York), and three of the Knitting Factory's "Radical New Jewish Culture" festivals curated by John Zorn. Annie's work has been performed at many venues worldwide, including Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre, Merkin Hall, Walter Reade Theater, the Anchorage under the Brooklyn Bridge, Tonic, the Knitting Factory, Roulette, The Stone, and Experimental Intermedia, (New York City); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco); Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); Teatro Olimpico (Rome); Théâtre de la Ville (Paris); Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw); The Hermitage (Saint Petersburg); and many other spaces. Gosfield's portrait concert at Merkin Hall was featured in the New York Times' “Best of 2007” issue.

Active as a performer and improviser, Gosfield has played with Derek Bailey, Joan Jeanrenaud, Roger Kleier, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, William Winant, Ikue Mori, Scanner, Marc Ribot, Min Xiao Fen, Joey Baron, Jim Pugliese, Christine Bard, Sim Cain, David Moss, Davey Williams, and LaDonna Smith. Annie's compositions have been used by numerous choreographers and dance companies, including Karole Armitage, Susan Marshall, Robin Stiehm, Ginger Thatcher, Milwaukee Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, Simone Clifford Dancers (Australia), Didy Veldman with Skanes Dansteater, Ballet Gulbenkian (Portugal), Gruppen Fyra (Finland), and Ballett der Staatsoper Hannover (Germany), at venues in the U.S., Europe, and Australia, including BAM's "Next Wave" festival, the Joyce Theatre, Jacob's Pillow, The Duke Theatre on 42nd Street, The Adelaide Festival Centre, and The Venice Biennale.

Annie's discography includes three solo releases on the Tzadik label, as well as compositions on Sony Classical, CRI, Harmonia Mundi, Wergo, Caprice, Cantaloupe, Rift, EMF, Innova, Atavistic, ORF, Recommended, and Starkland. In 1999 Gosfield created Shoot the Player Piano, a six–minute video for an imaginary orchestra of aged mechanical musical instruments. The video was commissioned by the American Composers Forum for the Sonic Circuits Festival, and has been played at film festivals in the U.K. and Slovenia, as well as at the Berkeley Film Archives, Rockefeller Center, and colleges throughout the U.S.

Annie's most recent Tzadik CD, "Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites" features four recent pieces drawn from her extensive work for soloists and ensembles. The CD demonstrates her very personal approach to contemporary classical music, at once noisy, melodic, and atmospheric. Compositions include The Harmony of the Body–Machine, composed for ex–Kronos cellist Joan Jeanrenaud; Lightheaded and Heavyhearted, performed by the Flux Quartet; Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites, for violin and satellite sounds, composed for George Kentros; and Mentryville, performed by the composer on prepared piano.

Annie's 2001 Tzadik CD "Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery", features music inspired by factory sounds, including EWA7, performed by Roger Kleier (guitar), Ikue Mori (electronics), Sim Cain and Jim Pugliese (percussion) and Gosfield (sampling keyboards); and Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery, performed by The Flux Quartet and Talujon Percussion Quartet. EWA7 was composed in 1999, during a six–week residency in the factories of Nuremberg, Germany, where Gosfield recorded and researched the sounds of machines and industrial environments as the recipient of the Siemens Kultur Programm's "Artists on Site" award. The concert–length piece was originally composed for a site–specific performance in a factory in Nuremberg, and incorporates sampled machine sounds, percussion played on industrial found metal, altered electric guitar, machine‚inspired rhythms, ambient noise, and the recycled sounds of many factories. EWA7 was subsequently performed at Warsaw Autumn, Tampere Jazz Happening, Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, the Anchorage under the Brooklyn Bridge, the Exploratorium (San Francisco), Merkin Concert Hall, and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Flying Sparks and Heavy Machinery, a double quartet for strings and percussion, was also inspired by her experiences in the factories of Nuremberg. It was originally commissioned for the Other Minds Festival (San Francisco), and has been performed at Warsaw Autumn and throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Gosfield's first solo CD, "Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires", focuses on work inspired by detuned and destroyed instruments. The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory recreates the wild card tunings of destroyed pianos and prepared pianos; Four Roses features microtonal scordatura for cello with detuned piano; and Blue Serge incorporates a raucous lexicon of analog synth sounds. Performers include ROVA saxophone quartet, cellist Ted Mook, guitarist Roger Kleier, percussionists Jim Pugliese and Christine Bard, and Annie Gosfield on sampling keyboards.

Ms. Gosfield's composition The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory was recorded by the Bang on a Can All Stars for their Sony Classical CD "Cheating, Lying, Stealing" and "Bang on a Can Classics". It was premiered at Lincoln Center in New York, and performed at Wien Modern, The Israel Festival, The Adelaide Festival, The Venice Biennale, Warsaw Autumn, Settembre Musica, and throughout the world (1995–2006). Her own performance of The Manufacture... received honorary mention at Prix Ars Electronica. The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory has also been performed by Present Music, Zeitgeist, Relache, Agon Orchestra, and Gosfield's own ensemble.

Current projects include a new portrait CD for Tzadik, a CD of piano works performed by Lisa Moore on Cantaloupe, and a concert-length piece for Athelas Sinfonietta and her own trio based on the clandestine radio transmissions of the Danish Resistance in World War II to premiere at the Huddersfield Festival..

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