Join us for a lecture with composer/performer and interdisciplinary artist Pamela Z Wednesday, November 30th , 4-7pm at Timken Hall

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working primarily with voice, live electronics, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. In addition to her solo work, she has been commissioned to compose scores for dance, theatre, film, and chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, the Bang on a Can All Stars, Julia Bullock with SF Symphony, and the LA Philharmonic New Music Group. Her interdisciplinary performance works have been presented at venues including The Kitchen (NY), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), REDCAT (LA), and MCA (Chicago), and her installations have been presented at such exhibition spaces as the Whitney (NY), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), and the Krannert (IL). Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including Bang on a Can (NY), Interlink (Japan), Other Minds (San Francisco), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Dak’Art (Sénégal) and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Festival (Wuppertal). She’s a recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize, United States Artists, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, Herb Alpert Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Through video and audio examples and a bit of live demonstration, composer/performer and interdisciplinary artist Pamela Z will share her work and her process, and will discuss the increasingly blurred lines between disciplines in her practice.  Highlighting her use of voice, processing, gesture-based MIDI controllers, video, found objects, and sampled speech sounds, she will illustrate the various directions her work has taken over the years and tie in the projects she’s working on now.