- Department:
- Composition
Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider,” lives in New York City and works in 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 received a 2021 Music Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2017), American Academy in Rome (2015), American Academy in Berlin (2012), and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2008).
Annie’s varied experiences as a composer, keyboardist (on sampling keyboard and piano) and improvisor have led to many varied projects; she has composed site-specific music for factories; researched jammed radio signals; led a band driven by vacuum, machine, and analog synth sounds; composed a large-scale work inspired by Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals; and developed two orchestral pieces during a residency sponsored by the League of American Orchestras. She recently worked with Sigourney Weaver, Yuval Sharon, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic on her multi-site opera “War of the Worlds.” This critically acclaimed project took place simultaneously in Walt Disney Concert Hall and three parking lots in Downtown L.A., using repurposed air raid sirens as speakers.
Gosfield has been commissioned by and worked closely with The L.A. Philharmonic, Bang on a Can All-Stars, JACK Quartet, MIVOS Quartet, FLUX Quartet, So Percussion, Joan Jeanrenaud, Kathleen Supové, Lisa Moore, Felix Fan, FrancesMarie Uitti, Stephen Gosling, Anthony DeMare, Pauline Kim Harris, String Noise, Jennifer Choi, and many others. Annie has performed with Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Ches Smith, Chris Cutler, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Nels Cline, Yuka Honda, Wadada Leo Smith, and Roger Kleier. Her discography includes four portrait CD’s on Tzadik, and compositions on Sony Classical, EMI, Innova, CRI, Mode, ReR, Harmonia Mundi, Wergo, CRI, and ECM.
Active as an educator, Gosfield was a visiting lecturer of composition at Columbia University in 2021. She was the Milhaud Professor of composition at Mills College, a visiting lecturer at Princeton University and U.T. Austin, and a visiting artist at CalArts. Several of her articles have been published by the New York Times in the series “The Score,” and her writing has been published in various magazines, books, and journals.