Residency Dates: May 12, 2019 - June 01, 2019
Application Deadline: December 02, 2018
Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider,” lives in New York City and works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. Her music is often inspired by the inherent beauty of found sounds, noise, and machinery. She was dubbed “a master of musical feedback” by The New York Times, who wrote “Ms. Gosfield’s choice of sounds — which on this occasion included radio static, the signals transmitted by the Soviet satellite Sputnik I, and recordings of Hurricane Sandy — are never a mere gimmick. Her extraordinary command of texture and timbre means that whether she is working with a solo cello or with the ensemble she calls her “21st-century avant noisy dream band,” she is able to conjure up a palette of saturated and heady hues.” In 2017 Gosfield collaborated with Yuval Sharon and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on the multi-site opera War of the Worlds. This large-scale, citywide collaborative performance was a powerful engagement with public life, bringing opera out of the concert hall and into the streets. Three defunct air raid sirens located in downtown Los Angeles were re-purposed into public speakers to broadcast a free, live performance from Walt Disney Concert Hall. The sirens also served as remote sites for singers and musicians to report back to the concert hall from the street. The notorious 1938 radio drama created by Orson Welles came to new life, directed by The Industry’s Yuval Sharon, conducted by Christopher Rountree and narrated by Sigourney Weaver. The New York Times wrote about “Gosfield’s thrilling chamber orchestra writing,” and Alex Ross selected it as a “Notable Performance of 2017” Gosfield was a 2012 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, the 2015 Fromm Composer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome, and the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ “Grants to Artists” award. Most recently, she was awarded a 2017 Guggenheim fellowship in music composition. Other recent activities include two new works for orchestra in a residency sponsored by the League of American Orchestras, and a portrait concert featuring work about immigrant life at YIVO in New York City. Dedicated to working closely with performers, Gosfield has been commissioned by and collaborated with the JACK Quartet, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Christina and Michelle Naughton, The Bang on a Can All-Stars, MIVOS Quartet, Flux Quartet, Kathleen Supové, Joan Jeanrenaud, Lisa Moore, Felix Fan, Frances-Marie Uitti, String Noise, Pauline Kim Harris, and Anthony De Mare. She has performed with John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, David Moss, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, Billy Martin, Roger Kleier, and many others. Her work has been performed at Warsaw Autumn, Bang on a Can Marathon, Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Ecstatic Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Wien Modern, OtherMinds, Spoleto Festival, Company Week, and MATA. Annie presented a noisy new music dance band in 2015 at Ecstatic Music, with music driven by analog synths, machines, and vacuums, in a collaboration with Downtown luminaries Billy Martin, Roger Kleier, and a horn section led by trumpeter Steven Bernstein. Annie’s discography includes four portrait CDs on the Tzadik label. Her latest release, Almost Truths and Open Deceptions includes a piece for solo piano and broken shortwave radio, a chamber cello concerto, and a quartet inspired by warped 78 records. Large-scale projects include EWA7, a site-specific work created during a residency in the industrial environments of Nuremberg, Germany; Signal Jamming and Random Interference, composed in close collaboration with the JACK Quartet, uses samples of jammed wartime radio signals; and Daughters of the Industrial Revolution, a concert-length piece inspired by her grandparents’ immigrant experiences in New York City during the Industrial Revolution. Gosfield has written a series of articles about the compositional process for The New York Times’ series “The Score.” She held the Darius Milhaud chair of composition at Mills College and has taught at Princeton University and CalArts. Upcoming projects include a new Tzadik CD, a piece inspired by Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals that will premiere under the murals themselves, premieres in Athens and New York, and a residency at The Stone at the New School, New York.
For more information, visit http://www.anniegosfield.com/index.html.
Residency Statement
I welcome all approaches to music in the Associates’ artistic practice. We will investigate how to best communicate the ideas of a composer, sound artist, musician, and/or improviser, to emphasize the impulse of music, while striving to create work that balances the heart, the hand, and the mind. Our shared experiences will be critical in working together to further develop individual pieces as well as our overall view of music. Scores, recordings, and live performance can all be part of our discussion. I look forward to an open, creative environment that encourages frank discussion and collaboration. Our work will depend largely on the Associates, but will likely include everything from the collaboration of composers and performers, the nuts and bolts of notating electronics, combining composition and improvisation, to more universal subjects of creativity and music in our lives.
Application Requirements
Prospective Associates should send:
A bio (one page maximum, PDF)
A statement of any specific goals or interests related to the residency (PDF)
2 recorded work samples (MP3)
With accompanying scores if appropriate (PDF)
or a statement about the approach to the work (PDF).
Please list the performers, date of composition, date of performance, and recording conditions (studio, live concert, etc.).
Residency Fee: $900
Includes a $100 administration fee, weekday meals and housing; does not include artist materials, transportation, or weekend meals.
Scholarships / Financial Assistance
Only accepted Associate Artists may apply for financial assistance. For details, please visit the master artist details page.