Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and audio artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing and sampling technology. Processing her live voice through “MAX MSP” software on a PowerBook, she creates solo works that combine operatic bel canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with found percussion objects, spoken word, and sampled concrète sounds. These sounds are triggered with a MIDI controllers (including The BodySynth™), which allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in flexible black-box venues and proscenium halls .
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; and Pina Bausch Tanztheater's 25 Jahre Fest in Wuppertal, Germany. She has composed, recorded and performed original scores for choreographers and for film/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 Theater in San Francisco and at the Kitchen in New York. Her multi-media opera Wunderkabinet – based on the Museum of Jurassic Technology (created in collaboration with Matthew Brubeck and Christina McPhee) premiered at The LAB Gallery in September of 2005 and will be presented at REDCAT Theatre in LA in October 2006. She has had audio works in exhibitions at galleries and museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and theErzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum in Cologne, and the Dakar Biennale in Sénégal. Her work has also been presented at the San Jose Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio in New York, and La Biennale di Venezia in Italy.
Ms. Z has been commissioned to compose works for new music chamber ensembles: the Bang On A Can Allstars; the string quartet Ethel, the California E.A.R. Unit; the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and the St. Luke’s 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 experimental artists in various genres. She has been a member of the electroacoustic ensemble sensorChip (with Miya Masaoka and Donald Swearingen), and the interdisciplinary performance ensemble, The Qube Chix. She has given 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. Pamela is the recipient of numerous awards, including: the Guggenheim Fellowship, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts; the Creative Capital Fund; 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, please visit: www.pamelaz.com.