Amy X Neuburg

website: www.amyxneuburg.com

Amy X Neuburg is renowned throughout the creative music community as a unique and innovative performer/composer/poet — “a one-woman musical hurricane” (Otago Times, New Zealand). Using an electronic drumset, a real-time looping machine, an array of sounds and samples, and her nearly four-octave vocal range, she creates complex, finely crafted, emotionally intense songs and stories that are at once personal and poignant, and wildly entertaining. In live performance Amy uses the looper to build up thick vocal harmonies one layer at a time, and she controls all of her loops and samples by hitting drum pads, stomping on foot pedals, and grabbing faders. There are no “canned” or pre-recorded tracks.

A resident of Oakland, California, Amy has performed her solo "avant-cabaret" works for voice and live electronics at clubs, theaters, festivals, schools and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad, with frequent appearances in the Bay Area and New York. Highlights include the Other Minds and Bang on a Can festivals, the Berlin International Poetry Festival, the headlining spot at the Electro-Music conference in Philadelphia, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Chicago Arts Club, residencies at Oberlin, Colorado College, and Columbia College Chicago, and universities and festivals throughout New Zealand.

Lately Amy’s focus has shifted to working with chamber ensembles in combination with her voice and live looping electronics. Recent commissions include The Metaphor for voice and looped instruments with Present Music (Milwaukee), a song cycle Beliebig Füllen (Fill as Desired) —with text combining Jewish recipes with her own poetry—for 7 vocalists and live looping, and a site-specific work The Traveler for 15 “traveling” vocalists (Christchurch Art Museum, New Zealand). She is now at work on an evening-length song cycle with her new cello trio, which she has presented in part at The Lab in SF and Roulette in New York.

A classically trained vocalist, Amy has been featured in numerous contemporary works and recordings. Highlights include tours through Europe and Japan with Robert Ashley's operas, the leading role of Simone Weil in the Anne Carson / Guillermo Galindo opera Decreation, a long-running musical comedy with Culture Clash, and a recital of Marc Blizstein songs at Yerba Buena Theater, San Francisco.

Amy has composed extensively for modern dance, independent films, theater, and art installations. In 2000/2001 she was ongoing composer for Mondomedia's popular Piki & Poko in Starland web animations. As collaborator, Amy spent 10 years singing and drumming with her electronic band Amy X Neuburg & Men, and before that she was a core member of the experimental computer-music-theater ensemble MAP.

Amy studied voice (B.Mus.) and linguistics (B.A.) at Oberlin College/Conservatory and electronic music (M.F.A.) at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. Awards and honors include Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Kappa Lambda, Oberlin Conservatory Honors; residencies with Music Omi, Nautilus Composers & Playwrights, Djerassi Resident Artists, and the Arts Centre of Christchurch (New Zealand); and grants from Arts International, the U.S. Embassy New Zealand, and Meet the Composer. In 2005 Amy was featured in the book The Art of Digital Music: 56 Visionary Artists & Insiders Reveal their Creative Secrets (Backbeat Books), and she has been interviewed about her recording and looping techniques in Electronic Musician, Guitar Player, and (upcoming) Modern Drummer magazines.

Her most recent CD Residue is on Other Minds records. Three previous CDs were released on the Racer label.

Sound samples, hi-res photos, and lots more info can be found at www.amyxneuburg.com.

Contact: amyx@isproductions.com • (510) 653-3556