About Evan Ziporyn

Composer/clarinetist Evan 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 redefined the clarinet with his 2001 solo CD, “This Is Not A Clarinet,” which made numerous Top Ten lists across America. 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 Tailenders, and his playing was featured in the soundtrack for David Lang's (Untitled) and Tan Dun's Fallen. He has also recorded with Paul Simon, Matthew Shipp, and Ethel. He is also Founder and Artistic Director of Boston’s Gamelan Galak Tika, a group dedicated to new music for Balinese gamelan, which he has studied for 30 years.

Evan 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. These culminated in 2009 with his opera A House in Bali, based on Colin McPhee's memoir, which brought the opera singers together with Balinese traditional performers, and Bang on a Can together with Gamelan Salukat. It premiered to widespread attention and critical acclaim in Bali and Berkeley. Prior to this, Shadow Bang, his collaboration with master Balinese dalang Wayan Wija, was the centerpiece of the 2006 Amsterdam GrachtenFest. His works have also been featured at numerous international festivals in London, New York, and the Sydney Olympics.

His work as a composer and performer led to his receiving the 2007 USArtists Walker Award and the 2004 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship. His music has been commissioned and performed by Yo-yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, 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." Recordings of his works have been released on Cantaloupe, Sony Classical, New Albion, New World, Koch, Innova, and CRI. He has collaborated with some of the worlds 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.

Current

Evan 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 and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, to be premiered in November 2010.