Pamela
Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and
audio artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic
processing, and sampling technology . She creates
solo works combining operatic bel canto and experimental extended
vocal techniques with found percussion objects, spoken
word, "MAX MSP" on a PowerBook, and sampled concrête
sounds triggered with a MIDI controller called The
BodySynth™ which
allows her to manipulate sound with physical gestures.
Her performances range in scale from small concerts
in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in
proscenium halls and flexible black-box venues.
Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United
States, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous
festivals including Bang On A Can at Lincoln Center in
New York, the Interlink Festival in Japan, Other Minds
in San Francisco, Pina Bausch Tanztheater's 25 Jahre Fest
in Wuppertal, Germany, and La Biennale di Venezia in Venice,
Italy. She has composed, recorded and performed original
scores for choreographers and for film and video artists,
and has done vocal work for other composers (including
Charles Amirkhanian, and Henry Brant). Her large-scale,
multi-media performance works, Parts of Speech, Gaijin and Voci ,
have been presented at Theater Artaud and ODC Theatre in
San Francisco, and her audio works have been included in
exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York and the Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum
in Cologne. In May of 2004, her work will be presented
at La Biennale de l'Art Africain Contemporain– Dak'Art
in Dakar, Senegal.
Ms.
Z has composed commissioned works for new music chamber
ensembles the Bang On A Can Allstars, the California
E.A.R. Unit, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and St. Lukes
Chamber Orchestra. Since 1986 she has been producing "Z
Programs",
an ongoing series of interdisciplinary events in
which her own work has been featured along with that of
other artists doing experimental work in various genres.
She is a member of the electroacoustic ensemble sensorChip
(with Miya Masaoka and Donald Swearingen) and the
interdisciplinary performance ensemble The Qube Chix. She
has done several concerts and experimental theater pieces
with Zakros New Music Theatre (including their John Cage
festivals), and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary
Music Players. She is the recipient of numerous awards
including a 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, the CalArts Alpert
Award in the Arts, the ASCAP Music Award, and the NEA and
Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a
music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
For more information, visit www.pamelaz.com.
