PAMELA MADSEN

Pamela Madsen is a composer, performer, theorist and curator of new music. From her massive landscape inspired projects and intimate chamber music creations, to her multi-media opera collaborations and immersive deep listening works she has created a body of work focusing on the integration of image, music and text, with research on the impact of sound, biomechanisms of vibro-acoustics and the environment. With a Ph.D. in Music Composition from UCSD, Mellon Foundation Awards for her doctoral studies in Music Theory at Yale University, Post-Doctoral research at IRCAM in Paris, and Certificate in Deep Listening with Pauline Oliveros, her works have been commissioned and premiered world-wide.

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Her works focus on the creation of large-scale, concert length, transformative multi-media experiences which engage issues of social change. Large-Scale Projects include: US Embassy/Russian Embassy tour with Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble for Music Across Borders, National Endowment for the Arts and New Music USA commission for Oratorio for the Earth: There Will Come Soft Rains- Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Eclipse Quartet, Ashley Bathgate, Vicki Ray, Luminous Etudes: Visions of the Black Madonna of Montserrat with loadbang, pianists Kathleen Supove, Eleonor Sandresky, Luminosity: Passions of Marie Curie multi-media opera for musicians from soundscape, Either/OR, Arctic Research for: Melting Away: Gravity for orchestra, with photographer Camille Seaman; Sedna for Zeitgeist, The Land of the Moon for Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, Envisioning the Future Project with visual artist Judy Chicago for We are All Sibyls (2004) a multi-media installation/opera premiered throughout Los Angeles.

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Intimate chamber music works focusing on spoken text and music have been commissioned and premiered by such artists as Claire Chase, Jane Rigler, Anne LaBerge, Lisa Moore, Sarah Cahill, Ashley Bathgate, Trio Solisti, New York New Music Ensemble, California Ear Unit, Verdehr Trio, Zeitgeist, JACK, Ethel, Lyris and Arditti String Quartet, with multi-media collaborations with video artists Quintan Ana Wikswo, and Jimena Sarno. Selected as an Alpert Award Panelist, and Creative Capital artist “on the radar” with awards from National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Meet the Composer, artist residency awards at MacDowell Colony, UCross and Santa Fe she is a frequent guest lecturer, composer-performer-improviser and invited scholar at universities and festivals world-wide. She is curator of the Annual New Music Festival, World Electro-acoustic Listening Room Project, Director of the New Music Ensemble and InterArts Collaborative Projects at Cal State Fullerton where she is Professor of Music Composition.