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Theresa Wong (born March 31, 1976) is an American cellist, [1] vocalist, composer and improviser in the field of experimental music. In 2013 she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.
She was born in Schenectady, New York, United States. Wong studied classical piano and cello in her early years and attended Stanford University, where she completed a B.S. in product design. After studies in graphic design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and a one year fellowship in design at Benetton Group's Fabrica research centre in Treviso, Italy, she returned to the Bay Area and completed a Master of Fine Arts at Mills College, [2] studying with Fred Frith, Joan Jeanrenaud, Alvin Curran, Joëlle Léandre and Annie Gosfield.
Her debut album, The Unlearning, was released on Tzadik Records in September 2011. This work is a collection of 21 songs inspired by Francisco Goya's The Disasters of War etchings, and is performed by Wong on cello and voice and Carla Kihlstedt on violin and voice. Her other works include O Sleep, an improvised opera premiered at Southern Exposure, which she directed and presented with an ensemble of eight performers, Call It Culture, a cello duo written for Joan Jeanrenaud, Meet Me At The Future Garden, for two voices and eight intonarumori, performed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts with the Magik*Magik Orchestra commissioned for Performa 09's Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners, and Xenoglossia, a piece for live and pre-recorded voice composed as a soundtrack to conceptual artist Jonathon Keats' travel documentary for plants, Strange Skies presented at the Berkeley Art Museum.
Wong has performed throughout the United States and internationally with artists including Fred Frith, Joëlle Léandre, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Vinny Golia, Ellen Fullman, Carla Kihlstedt, Anna Halprin and Luciano Chessa. She also appears in Peter Esmonde’s documentary on Ellen Fullman, 5 Variations on a Long String (2010).
Derek Bailey was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company.
Miya Masaoka is an American composer, musician, and sound artist active in the field of contemporary classical music and experimental music. Her work encompasses contemporary classical composition, improvisation, electroacoustic music, inter-disciplinary sound art, sound installation, traditional Japanese instruments, and performance art. She is based in New York City.
Jeremy Webster "Fred" Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser.
Alvin Curran is an American composer, performer, improviser, sound artist, and writer. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and lives and works in Rome, Italy. He is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds. He was a professor of music at Mills College in California until 2006 and now teaches privately in Rome and sporadically at various institutions.
Ikue Mori, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, electronic musician, composer, and graphic designer. Mori was awarded a "Genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2022.
Annie Gosfield is a New-York-based composer who works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. She composes for others and performs with her own group, taking her music to festivals, factories, clubs, art spaces and concert halls. Much of her work combines acoustic instruments with electronic sounds, incorporating unusual sources such as satellite sounds, machine sounds, 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.
Carla Kihlstedt is an American composer, violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania and currently working from a home studio on Cape Cod.
Chris Brown is an American composer, pianist and electronic musician, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improviser and pianist with groups as "Room" and the "Glenn Spearman Double Trio." In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble "The Hub". He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation "Talking Drum", the "Inventions" series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance "Transmissions" series, with composer Guillermo Galindo.
Michiyo Yagi, a Japanese musician who studied koto under Tadao Sawai, Kazue Sawai and Satomi Kurauchi, and graduated from the NHK Professional Training School for Traditional Musicians. Between 1989 and 1990, during her tenure as visiting professor of music at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, U.S.A., she premiered numerous modern compositions for koto and came under the influence of maverick American composers such as John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, and John Zorn. Her solo koto CD Shizuku was produced by Zorn and released on the Tzadik label in 1999. In 2001 she recorded "Yural" with her koto ensemble Paulownia Crush for the East Works label. Under the auspices of the Japan Foundation, Yagi toured Russia with this ensemble in the fall of 2004.
Carlos Zíngaro is a Portuguese violinist and electronic musician active in free improvisation.
Joëlle Léandre is a French double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation.
Fred Frith appears on over 400 recordings. This is a selection from bands he was/is a member of, collaborations with other bands and musicians, and his solo recordings. The year indicates when the album was first released. For a comprehensive discography, see the Discography of Fred Frith by Michel Ramond, Patrice Roussel and Stephane Vuilleumier.
Freedom in Fragments is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It was composed by Frith in 1993 as "a suite of 23 pieces for saxophone quartet", and was performed by the Rova Saxophone Quartet between February 1999 and January 2000 in San Francisco. The album was released on Tzadik Records' Composer Series in 2002. Frith does not perform on this album.
The Happy End Problem is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith, and is the fifth of a series of Music for Dance albums he made. It comprises two suites composed in 2003 by Frith "for flute, bassoon, gu zheng, percussion, violin and electronics" and was recorded in 2003 and 2004.
Kevin Norton is an American percussionist and composer active in the New York City jazz and contemporary music scenes. He has performed and recorded with a diverse group of musicians, including Anthony Braxton, Paul Dunmall, Milt Hinton, Fred Frith, David Krakauer, Joëlle Léandre, Frode Gjerstad, Wilber Morris, James Emery, Bern Nix, and many others. In 1999, he founded Barking Hoop Recordings, a record label dedicated to releasing new and original music. Kevin Norton has also spent summers at camp Encore/Coda in Maine teaching music theory classes and private percussion classes. The label has released 11 CDs to date, which feature Norton's own groups as well as artists such as Anthony Braxton, Kevin O'Neil, Billy Stein, and the String Trio of New York.
Back to Life is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith. It comprises five classical chamber music pieces composed by Frith between 1993 and 2005, and was performed between 1998 and 2007 by Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle, United States percussionist William Winant, and the Callithumpian Consort ensemble of the New England Conservatory of Music, conducted by Stephen Drury. The album was released on Tzadik Records' Composer Series in 2008.
Maybe Monday is an American experimental electroacoustic improvisation music ensemble comprising guitarist Fred Frith, koto player Miya Masaoka and saxophonist Larry Ochs. The trio was formed in San Francisco in March 1997 when they performed in a concert at the Great American Music Hall. They have since toured the United States, Canada and Europe, and released three albums between 1999 and 2008.
Larry Ochs is an American jazz saxophonist, co-founder of the Rova Saxophone Quartet and Metalanguage Records.
Wu Fei is a virtuoso Chinese American composer, performer, and improviser from Beijing, China. She performs on the Chinese guzheng, an ancient zither with twenty-one strings, as well as sings. She currently resides in Nashville. Wu Fei has composed for a variety of musical genres, including choir, string quartet, chamber ensemble, Balinese gamelan, orchestral, film, and modern dance.
Nowhere, Sideshow, Thin Air is a studio album by English guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith, and is the sixth of a series of Music for Dance albums he made.
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