Evan ZiporynComposer (United States) Composer Evan Ziporyn began his involvement with gamelan in 1980, traveling to Bali immediately upon graduating from Yale in 1981. He received a Fulbright in 1987, and in 1990 began composing an ongoing series of groundbreaking cross-cultural works, combining gamelan with saxophones, guitars, electronics, Chinese and African instruments, and full orchestra. His work as a composer and performer led to his receiving the 2007 USA Artists Walker Award and the 2004 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship. Ziporyn's music has been commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet, Wu Man, the American Composers Orchestra, the American Repertory Theater, Maya Beiser, So Percussion, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with whom he recorded his 2006 orchestral CD, Frog's Eye. In the summer of 2009, his opera, A House in Bali, was premiered in both Ubud, Bali, and Berkeley, California. Based on the life of composer Colin McPhee, the work features opera singers alongside traditional Balinese performers, full gamelan, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. It is Ziporyn's largest gamelan-fusion work to date.
He has an equally distinguished career as a clarinetist: his 2001 solo clarinet CD, This Is Not A Clarinet, made numerous Top Ten lists and was featured on All Things Considered and PRI’s The World. Ziporyn is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars (Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Year), with whom he has toured the globe since 1992. He recorded the definitive version of Steve Reich’s solo clarinet New York Counterpoint for Nonesuch and, as a member of the Steve Reich Ensemble, the Grammy Award-winning Music for 18 Musicians. His music provided the soundtrack for the PBS film The Tailenders, and his playing was featured in Tan Dun's soundtrack for the film Fallen. He has also recorded with Paul Simon, Matthew Shipp, and Ethel.
Recordings of his works have been released on Cantaloupe, Sony Classical, New Albion, New World, Koch, Innova and CRI. Ziporyn 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, Wu Man, Wayan Wija and Kyaw Kyaw Naing. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has two children, Leo (16) and Ava (9). He is currently working on a tabla concerto for Sandeep Das, to be premiered in Boston in November 2010.
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