Airplane Ears Music: Artists

Evan Ziporyn, founder and Artistic Director of Gamelan Galak Tika, began his involvement with gamelan in 1980; his compositions in this idiom range from tonight's Tire Fire to works combining gamelan with electronics, Chinese and African instruments, and full orchestra. His music has been commissioned and performed by Yo-yo Ma's Silk Road Project, the Kronos Quartet, Wu Man, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with whom he recorded his 2006 orchestral CD, "Frog's Eye." He has an equally distinguished career as a clarinetist: he is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars, and his 2001 solo clarinet CD, “This Is Not A Clarinet,” made numerous Top Ten lists. He has also recorded for Nonesuch (including Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint and the Grammy Award winning Music for 18 Musicians), Thirsty Ear, and Point; his music provided the soundtrack for the PBS film "Tail-enders", and his playing was featured in Tan Dun's soundtrack for the film "Fallen.” With Bang on a Can, he has collaborated with some of the world's most creative and vital living musicians, including Brian Eno, Ornette Coleman, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Iva Bittova, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Don Byron, Louis Andriessen, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, Wayan Wija, Kyaw Kyaw Naing, and Pamela Z. He received the 2007 USArtists Walker Award and the 2004 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has two children, Leo (15) and Ava (8). He is currently working on an opera based on the life of Colin McPhee, to be premiered in Bali with the All-stars in June 2009.

For more information, please visit Evan's website, www.ziporyn.com