Christopher McIntyre

Christopher McIntyre, Artistic DirectorChristopher McIntyre leads a multi-faceted career in the contemporary arts as a composer, solo and ensemble performer, and curator/producer. The diversity of his activities led Time Out New York to note "...with every passing week, trombonist-composer Chris McIntyre becomes more central to the new-music experience in New York." (Nov. '09) He performs on trombone and Nord synthesizer in a variety of settings, ranging from fully notated concert works to open improvisations. Current projects include solo work, leading TILT Brass (Creative Brass Band and SIXtet), 7X7 Trombone Band, and electro-improv group LOTET, and collaborative efforts including the creative music ensemble Ne(x)tworks. McIntyre's trombone skills have been utilized in groups such as SEM Ensemble, Flexible Orchestra, The Knights, and the Darmstadt series' acclaimed performance of Terry Riley's In C, and in composer-led projects of Zeena Parkins, David First, Michael Schumacher, Elliott Sharp, Charles Waters, Jonathan Bepler (w/ Matthew Barney), and Anthony Coleman. Recordings of his work can be heard on New World, Tzadik, and Mode Records, and on Archive.org.McIntyre's compositions express a wide-range of musical and intellectual interests. In his composing, he has experimented with conceptual elements such as spatialization, recontextualized notated material, and improvisative strategy, along with ideas of scale, symmetrical pitch constructions, and self-similarity. The aesthetics of visual artists such as Sigmar Polke and Sol Lewitt have played an important role in creating several works. Polke's use of juxtaposition and imperfect repetition heavily influenced the Ne(x)tworks piece's Sigmar [unknown source] and Raster for quintet. The stuplimity series for various trombone ensembles (solo with laptop, quintet+, and the 7X7 septet) derives concepts directly from LeWitt's early 70's multiple media work Variations on Incomplete Open Cubes, including the presentation of serialized material in disparate formats and media. He experiments with both conventional, instructional, and graphic notation systems to achieve these conceptual ends, frequently employing a combination within a single piece. The work invests a great deal in the creativity and musicianship of its players; each performance is a unique iteration of the original material.He has contributed to the repertoire of Lotet, TILT, Ne(x)tworks, 7X7, Flexible Orchestra, and B3+ brass trio. Performance highlights include presenting the collaborative folio score stuplimity no.2 (music for Sundown) created for 7x7 and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma (supported by American Music Center's Live Music For Dance program) both inside and out at ISSUE Project Room's Gowanus Canal location, and the combined forces of TILT and Lotet premiering Metaxis at Roulette in December '06, commissioned by Roulette and Jerome Foundation. Metaxis, a collection of cell-based notated material, has been heard in subsequent iterations including Metaxis 2 for TILT SIXtet, and Metaxis [Wave], a site-specific version presented at Free103point9's Wave Farm. During the Spring '08 season, McIntyre's multi-channel sound work silOM was presented at the 2008 MATA Festival Sound Installation (co-presented with Diapason Gallery), and Ne(x)tworks premiered an revised version of Raster for quintet, piano and string quartet, during the critically acclaimed 2009 MATA Festival.Beyond performing and creating music, McIntyre is active as a curator and concert producer. He is currently Artistic Director of MATA, a non-profit organization that commissions and presents the work of young composers. MATA's public programs include the bi-monthly series Interval (co-presented with Issue Project Room) and its annual Festival. He was curator for Ne(x)tworks for the past 3 years, developing repertoire ideas and programming concerts for the group, including its annual multi-event residencies (IPR '06, The Stone '07, CAM '08). He has served as Associate Music Curator at The Kitchen, acting as Artistic Director of the ten-piece experimental chamber orchestra Kitchen House Blend, and lead curator of live events during New Sound, New York Festival. Recent independent curatorial work at The Kitchen includes the multi-event projects Let's Go Swimming: A Tribute to Arthur Russell (May '08) and A Power Stronger Than Itself: A Celebration of the AACM (Oct. '08). Other recent independent projects include curating the month of June 2007 at John Zorn's East Village venue The Stone, featuring the festival Trombonophilia, and co-curating Horn Week in Feb. '08 at Issue Project Room.For more information, visit www.cmcintyre.com