Annie Gosfield

Annie Gosfield is a composer,
keyboard player and improviser who lives and works in New York. Her compositions
include acoustic and electronic works, and range from solo pieces for detuned
piano to chamber orchestra works that incorporate elements of improvisation and
detuned strings. Active in the downtown New York music scene, she focuses on
both notated music and improvisation, often combining the two. Gosfield’s
compositions have been performed by ensembles such as The Bang on a Can All
Stars, Rova, Agon Orchestra, The Spit Orchestra and The Crosstown Ensemble. She
performs throughout Europe and the U.S., playing piano and sampling keyboards
with her own ensemble and in solo concerts. Gosfield has worked with Roger
Kleier, Marc Ribot, LaDonna Smith, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp and many others. In
the early 1980s she played in the underground venues of Los Angeles with the
free improvisation group The Apes of God.
Last November she released the CD
Burnt Ivory and Loose Wires on Zorn’s Tzadik label: ”The sounds of a percussion
factory, a destroyed piano and an abandoned guitar are twisted into
sophisticated compositions incorporating tuned and detuned instruments,
traditional and non-traditional techniques, composition and improvisation.
Influenced by Harry Partch, Sun Ra, old nickelodeons and player pianos, Annie
Gosfield presents us with a new view of microtonal music”. Fanfare, the
Magazine for Serious Record Collectors, reviewed her music as “A furious
explosion, a thundering wall of pulsating machine sound that is irresistible”;
and The Village Voice added,”Her sampling techniques, offering a plethora of
complex, metallic, and percussive noices, resulted in the most kaleidoscopic
and sophisticated keyboard-sampler performance I’ve ever heard”.

Annie Gosfield: sampling keyboards; Roger Kleier: electric
guitar.

Participation of Annie Gosfield has been made possible in
part through support from: The Fund for US Artists at International Festivals
and Exhibitions, a public/private partnership of the National Endowment for the
Arts, the United States Information Agency, The Rockefeller Foundation, and The
Pew Charitable Trusts, with administrative support from Arts International.

In collaboration
with: KUD France Prešeren.