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About Paula Matthusen
Paula Matthusen is a composer, currently based in Brooklyn. She writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as run-on sentence of the pavement for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being "entrancing". Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.
Her music has been performed by Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), orchest de ereprijs, Ballett Frankfurt, noranewdanceco, Kathryn Woodard, Diesel Lounge Boys, and Jody Redhage. Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including Merkin Concert Hall, WAX, Judson Dance, Joyce SoHo, the Construction Company, Das TAT, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, Aural Tick Festival, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, NWEAMO, and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. She performs frequently with the electroacoustic duo ouisaudei, Groundwave New Music Collective, Object Collection, and recently winter company. Awards include a Fulbright Grant, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers' Award, First Prize in the Young Composers' Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship. Matthusen has also held residencies at create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Matthusen is currently studying at New York University - Graduate School of Arts and Science, where she is pursuing her Ph.D.
Download CV
- Coming soon
Selected past performances
Compositions
- of minutiae and memory (for voice, cello, and electronics)
Performed by Jody Redhage at the Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival (Richmond), The Stone, Galapagos Art Space, Rose Live Music, and Cornelia Street Café, NY. - Filling Vessels (sound installation and composition for four people and feedback)
Realized at the Universität der Künste—Berlin, CHOP SHOP, and iEar Studios at RPI, 2006. - but because without this (for bluegrass quartet)
Performed by the Diesel Lounge Boys at The Monkey, New York, and Artspace, New Haven, 2006. - luxury of superstition (for voice, oboe, violin, viola, cello, and percussion)
Performed at Altes Handelsbörse by interplay.exchange, Leipzig 2006. - the art of disappearing (for chamber orchestra)
Performed by orkest de ereprijs at the 2006 Gaudeamus New Music Week, Netherlands. - hopscotch 34 (for chamber ensemble) performed at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, 2006.
- circadia (sound installation)
Realized at the Lost Shadows Festival at Factory-Berlin, 2006. - …because it opens a path, because it does not close…
Performed by orkest de ereprijs at the 2005 International Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn, Netherlands. - …and, believing in… (for live processing and solo performer)
Performed and at INsideOUT at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2004), NYU-First Performance Concert Series (2004), and the 2005 SEAMUS National Conference. - continuity of parks (for chamber orchestra)
Performed by Alarm Will Sound at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 2004, and presented at Musik im Spiel DVSM Symposium in Bonn. - the distances (for flute, piano, percussion, and harp)
Performed by ICE Ensemble at NYU First Performance Concert Series, 2004. - Music for Communications from the Lab
Composed for choreographer Ivar Hagendoorn and performed by Ballett Frankfurt, 2004. - …of one sinuous spreading… (for piano and computer)
Performed at the International Spectral Music Conference, Istanbul (2003), NYU First Performance Concert Series NYU (2003). Performed at the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival (2005) and Texas A&M (2005). - glint (for 2-16 speakers depending on performance space)
Performed at NYU Electroacoustic Concert Series, featured at the 2004 ICMC Miami. - run on sentence of the pavement (for piano, ping-pong balls, and tape)
Performed by Ryan Dorin at the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival (2004) and by Kathryn Woodard at the Sunday Series at the Construction Company (2003), Hildegard Festival of Women in the Arts (2003) and the NYU-First Performance Concert Series (2002).
Live-electronics and Improv
- Live-electronics with Jenny Olivia Johnson as part of winter company at Salon-Saloon, New York; December, 2006.
- Live-electronics with amoebazoid and Linda Buckley at SHARE, New York; December, 2006.
- Live-electronics with Object Collection at Office-Ops, New York; September 2006.
- Live-electronics with Travis Just, Kara Feely, & Guido Hennenböhl at Gelgenheit, Berlin; July 2006.
- Live-electronics and accordion with Object Collection at CHOP SHOP, Berlin; July 2006.
- Live-electronics with ouisaudei and OstEar at Ausland, Berlin; May 2006.
- Live-electronics with Tintinnabulate at Club Dome, Troy; March, 2006.
- Live-electronics at Open Air with SHARE, New York; August, 2004.
- Live electronics with Groundwave New Music Collective as part of Cage’s Musicircus at The Construction Company; February 2003.
Site credits
- Design and authoring: Tom O'Doherty