American composer
Evan Ziporyn (b. Chicago, Illinois, December 14, 1959) is an American composer of post-minimalist music with a cross-cultural orientation, drawing equally from classical music, avant-garde, various world music traditions, and jazz. Ziporyn has composed for a wide range of ensembles, including symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, many types of chamber groups, and solo works, sometimes involving electronics. Balinese gamelan, for which he has composed numerous works, has compositions. He is known for his solo performances on clarinet and bass clarinet; additionally, Ziporyn plays gender wayang and other Balinese instruments, saxophones, piano &amp; keyboards, EWI, and Shona mbira.
Ziporyn is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as director of MIT's Center for Art, Science &amp; Technology (CAST). At MIT he directs Gamelan Galak Tika, an ensemble he founded in 1993, a group of 30 MIT students, staff and community members, devoted to the study and performance of new works for Balinese Gamelan.
He is currently a member of the Eviyan Trio, with Czech violinist/vocalist Iva Bittovà and American guitarist Gyan Riley.
He has released albums on Cantaloupe, New Albion, New World, Victo, Airplane Ears, and CRI Emergency Music; his works have also been recorded on Naxos, Koch, Innova, and World Village. As a performer, he has recorded for Nonesuch, Sony Classical, and Point Music, among others. He has composed music for a wide range of ensembles worldwide, including Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, the American Composers Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Ethel, cellist Maya Beiser, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, the MIT Wind Ensemble, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Sentieri Selvaggi, Gamelan Salukat, and Gamelan Semara Ratih.
Evan Ziporyn was named a 2007 USA Walker Fellow by United States Artists, an arts advocacy foundation dedicated to the support and promotion of America's top living artists.
He was born in Chicago, Illinois and now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts with composer Christine Southworth. He is the brother of Brook Ziporyn and Terra Ziporyn Snider, and has two children, Leonardo Ziporyn and Ava Ziporyn.
Career.
Ziporyn studied at Eastman, Yale and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He first traveled to Bali in 1981, studying with Madé Lebah, Colin McPhee's 1930s musical informant. He returned on a Fulbright in 1987. While living on the west coast during the 1980s he was a member of Gamelan Sekar Jaya. The three compositions he composed for Sekar Jaya all included western instruments.
He performed a clarinet solo at the First Bang on a Can Marathon in New York. His involvement with BOAC continued for 25 years: in 1992 he co-founded the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America's 2005 Ensemble of the Year), with whom he toured the globe and premiered over 100 commissioned works, collaborating with Nik Bartsch, Iva Bittova, Don Byron, Ornette Coleman, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Thurston Moore, Terry Riley and Tan Dun. He co-produced their seminal 1996 recording of Brian Eno's Music for Airports, as well as their 2012 "Big Beautiful Dark &amp; Scary" (2012). He left the group in the fall of that year to form Eviyan with Iva Bittová and Gyan Riley, with whom he now concertizes and records regularly. In the fall of 2013 he founded the Critical Band, a group devoted to the music of the late British composer Steve Martland.
Ziporyn joined the MIT faculty in 1990, founding Gamelan Galak Tika there in 1993, and continued a series of compositions for gamelan and western instruments. These include three evening-length works, 2001's "ShadowBang", 2004's "Oedipus Rex" at the American Repertory Theater (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009's "A House in Bali", an opera about composer Colin McPhee, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and artist Walter Spies, which joined Western singers Anne Harley, Marc Molomot and Timur Bekbosunov with Balinese traditional performers Nyoman Catra and Desak Made Suari Laksmi, and Bang on a Can All Stars with a full gamelan ensemble. It received its world premiere in Bali that summer and its New York premiere at BAM Next Wave in October 2010.
In 1992 Ziporyn founded the Bang on a Can All Stars, with whom he performed and recorded until 2012. He also was a member of Steve Reich and Musicians, with whom he shared a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.
As a clarinetist, Ziporyn recorded the definitive version of Steve Reich's multi-clarinet "New York Counterpoint" in 1996, sharing in that ensemble's Grammy Award in 1998. In 2001 his solo clarinet CD, "This is Not A Clarinet", made Top Ten lists across the country. His compositions have been commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, Wu Man, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with whom he recorded two CDs, "Frog's Eye" (2006) and "Big Grenadilla/Mumbai" (2012). His honors include awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2011), The Herb Alpert Foundation (2011), USA Artists Walker Fellowship (2007), MIT's Kepes Prize (2006), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship (2004), as well as commissions from Meet the Composer/Commissioning Music USA and the Rockefeller MAP Fund. Recordings of his works have been released on Cantaloupe, Sony Classical, New Albion, New World, Koch, Naxos, Innova, and CRI.
He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT. He has also been inaugural director of MIT's new Center for Art Science and Technology and still serves as head of Music and Theater Arts at the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST). He is also founder and artistic director of Gamelan Galak Tika, and curator of the MIT Sounding performance series.
November 2013, Les Disques Victo
Iva Bittova (violin/voice), Gyan Riley (guitar), Evan Ziporyn (clarinet/bass clarinet)
Compositions and improvisations by Bittova, Riley, and Ziporyn
October 2013, Airplane Ears Music
Clarinet / Bass Clarinet performed by Evan Ziporyn
Electronics and composition by Christine Southworth and Evan Ziporyn
April 2012, Cantaloupe Records 
Big Grenadilla (Evan Ziporyn, bass clarinet) 
Mumbai (Sandeep Das, tabla)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose, conductor
October 2006, Cantaloupe Records
Performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. 
Frog's Eye, The Ornate Zither and the Nomad Flute (Anne Harley, soprano), War Chant , Drill
November 2005, New Albion Records
Pondok (Sarah Cahill, piano) 
Typical Music (Arden Trio) 
Ngaben (Gamelan Galak Tika w/ New England Conservatory Philharmonia Dante Anzolini, director)
June 2003, Cantaloupe Records
Bang on a Can All-Stars with Wayan Wija, dalang
July 2001, Cantaloupe Records
Partial Truths
Four Impersonations: Honshirabe, Pengrangrang Gede, Thum Nyatiti, Bindu Semara
Three Island Duos by Michael Tenzer
Press Release by David Lang
May 2000, New World Records
Amok 
Tire Fire
CRI Emergency Music 1993
What She Saw There 
Tree Frog 
Waiting by the Phone 
Walk the Dog
New World Records 1993
Banyuari by Michael Tenzer, Situ Banda by Michael Tenzer, Khayalan Tiga by Wayne Vitale, Aneh Tapi Nyata by Evan Ziporyn, Kekembangan by Nyoman Windha &amp; Evan Ziporyn 
Performed by Gamelan Sekar Jaya
Honshirabe (4:00) Bindu Semara (5:30) Thum Nyatiti (2:30) Pengrangrang Gede (5:30)
Commissioned by Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program for I Wayan Wija and Bang on a Can Allstars; premiered October 2001 at MIT Kresge Auditorium, Cambridge, and MassMOCA, North Adams, MA
commissioned by Meet the Composer
commissioned by Boston Modern Orchestra Project
commissioned by the New England Conservatory; world premiere Jordan Hall, Boston, March 12, 2003 by Gamelan Galak Tika and the NEC Symphony, Dante Anzolini, conductor
commissioned and premiered by Boston Pro Arte Orchestra, Isaiah Jackson, conductor, October 2002
Works.
Wind ensemble.
The Ornate Zither and the Nomad Flute (2005) 15' – for solo soprano and wind ensemble
premiered March 2005 by Anne Harley with MIT Wind Ensemble, Fred Harris, director
Commissioned by Richard Nordlof.
premiered by EZ and MIT WindEnsemble, Fred Harris, director
commissioned and premiered by Nederlands Blazers, New Years Day 1996
for Orkest de Volharding, premiered at Ijsbreker, Amsterdam
 commissioned and premiered by Ethel, Miller Theater, New York, April 2003
 commissioned by Reader's Digest/Meet the Composer and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts for the Arden Trio, premiered Ketchum, ID, January 2001
 commissioned and premiered by red fishblue fish, Steven Schick, director; UCSD, La Jolla, CA, May 1999
 commissioned and premiered by Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman, conductor; Longy School, Cambridge, October 1997
 commissioned and premiered by Kronos Quartet, San Francisco, May 1996
 commissioned by Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program for Maya Beiser
 commissioned and premiered by California EAR Unit, LA County Museum
 commissioned by the Silk Road Project
 commissioned by Ensemble Robot and Boston Museum of Science, premiered January 25, 2005 by Evan Ziporyn and Todd Reynolds
 commissioned and premiered by Dinosaur Annex, Cambridge, MA June 2005
 commissioned by Sun Valley Center for the Arts and premiered by Todd Reynolds and Evan Ziporyn, Ketchum, ID, January 2003
 commissioned by The Kitchen for Kitchen House Blend, premiered December 2002
 commissioned by Chamber Music Conference of the East, Bennington, VT
four movements – 'Fragrant Forest' (4:30), 'Tree Trunk' (3:45), 'Ginoman' (2:00), 'Gebyog (Husk)' (10:00)
commissioned and premiered by Sarah Cahill
References.
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