Download Brief - Bill Thompson

Bill Thompson Artist Biography (updated 2010)
Brief:
Bill Thompson is a sound artist/composer/performer living in the UK. He is a
self-described throwback to the 60s and enjoys breaking things to hear what
they sound like. More information on his activities can be found on his
website: http://www.billthompson.org
Medium:
Bill Thompson is an international sound artist and composer who has
performed extensively throughout the UK and abroad. His work involves the
combination of found objects, field recordings, repurposed live electronics,
and digital media to create evolving sonic structures for sound installations
and live performance. Relocating from Texas in 2004, he was awarded a full
scholarship to pursue a PhD in Composition. Since then he has earned
numerous awards and commissions including the PRS for New Music ATOM
award, the GAVAA visual arts award, a Scottish Arts Council grant to support
a residency at STEIM, a PRS for New Music Three Festival commission
(Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Le Weekend, and Aberdeen
SOUND festival), the 2009 Aberdeenshire Homecoming commission, and the
2010 Aberdeen Visual Arts Award.
In addition to working as a solo artist, Thompson has also collaborated with
numerous well known artists including Keith Rowe, Mark Wastell, Burkhard
Beins, Faust, Rick Reed, and others. He is also an avid supporter of new
music, having hosted the first conference on sound art (SoundasArt) and the
first Phonography festival in Aberdeen. Thompson also curates the Burning
Harpsichord Series, a concert programme devoted to showcasing
experimental music of the highest calibre, such as Keith Rowe, Rhodri
Davies, Burkhard Beins, and Lee Patterson.
Thompson has releases on several labels and his work has been featured on
BBC’s Radio 3 programme, Hear and Now, as well as various other
programmes. He is available for performances, lectures, and workshops
concerning experimental composition, sound art, improvisation, and
aesthetics. For more information visit: www.billthompson.org
In Depth:
Bill Thompson is an international sound artist and composer who has
performed extensively throughout the UK and abroad. His work involves the
combination of found objects, field recordings, repurposed live electronics,
and digital media to create evolving sonic structures for sound installations
and live performance. Before relocating to the UK in 2004 to undertake
research for a PhD in Composition, Thompson was active performing,
writing, and curating experimental music in the US for several years.
Originally a jazz guitarist who had attended the prestigious jazz program at
the University of North Texas at Denton, he eventually found his way to
Texas State University in San Marcos where he earned his Masters degree in
Composition under Dr Russell Riepe. At Texas State, Thompson moved
beyond the guitar and wrote and performed on a wide range of instruments
including works for string quartet, cell phones, found objects, radios,
prepared guitar, laptop, DJ-CD players, tape players, and various
synthesisers and table top electronics.
After graduating, he immediately formed the gates ensemble which at that
time was the only regularly performing electroacoustic ensemble in the
Southwest with a focus on experimental music and improvisation. He cofounded the curatorial group ThomFariCraw, a modern music initiative
dedicated to the creation and presentation of the highest calibre of modern
experimental music, which hosted one of the only house concert series (the
loft series) in Texas that focused on new experimental music. He helped
found the Austin New Music Coop which has presented works by Terry Riley,
Pauline Oliveros, Arnold Dreyblatt, Christian Wolff, Cornelius Cardew, Morton
Feldman, John Cage, Earle Brown, as well as works by local composers. As a
member of ANMC, he conducted and gave the Texas premier of Earl Brown’s
Available Forms II. He also performed at and later co-curated the Austin
Museum of Digital Art’s Performance Series which brought artists such as
Richard Chartier and Phil Niblock to Austin for the first time. He hosted the
first Phonography festival in Texas that played works from around the world,
as well as performing at various festivals including Intersect 6, Toneburst,
and the Austin Noise Festival. Additionally, he designed and edited the
e.m.i.t. website (experimental music in Texas) that gave artist within the
Texas area a common virtual meeting point to discuss performing,
organizing, and attending new music events in the Texas area.
Since relocating to the UK, Thompson has been active as a performer,
composer, and sound artist. He has written for acoustic, electro-acoustic,
electronic, tape, and digital media, including sound installations, dance, and
video. He has earned numerous awards and commissions including the PRS
for New Music ATOM award, the GAVAA visual arts award, a Scottish Arts
Council grant to support a residency at STEIM, a PRS for New Music Three
Festival commission (Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Le
Weekend, and Aberdeen SOUND festival), the Aberdeenshire Homecoming
commission, a Dancelive 2010 commission, and the 2010 Aberdeen Visual
Arts Award.
In addition to working as a solo artist, Thompson has also collaborated with
numerous well known artists and choreographers including Faust, Keith
Rowe, Ian Spink, Claire Pencack, Mark Wastell, Burkhard Beins, Rick Reed,
and others, as well as sharing the bill with other notable artists such as John
Butcher, Rhodri Davies, Toshi Nakamura, Billy Roisz, Wolf Eyes,
Disinformation & Strange Attractor, murmur, and Lee Patterson. He is an
avid supporter of new music, having hosted the first conference on sound art
(SoundasArt) and the first Phonography festival in Aberdeen. Thompson also
regularly curates the Burning Harpsichord Series, a concert programme
devoted to showcasing experimental music of the highest calibre.
Thompson is also an active interpreter of works by other composers. He has
performed works by John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolf, Pauline
Oliveros, Jon Gibson, Terry Riley, John Zorn, and Edgar Varese to name but
a few. His own works have also been performed by other artists such as The
Red Note Ensemble, Thomas Helton, the Imbroglio String Quartet, and the
Hope ensemble. Thompson’s work has aired on numerous radio programs
including BBC Radio 3 Hear and Now, BBC Radio 4, Resonance FM, RRR,
fieldworks, Commercial Suicide, and The Fog. He has been released on
several labels including State Sanctioned Records, 7hings Records, Spectral
House, Ecolirecords, Porkbones, Bremsstrahlung, Autumn Records, and/Oar,
throat, as well as having work distributed by Deadline Records.
In addition to working as a composer and performer, Thompson is also
active as a sound and video artist and has had numerous installations
exhibited across the UK and US. These include the Nexus project that
showed in several galleries across Scotland in 2007 and 2008, as well as
various installations for the SOUND festival of Aberdeen (at the Aberdeen
Train Station), the University of Aberdeen (at the Marischall Museum),
Peacock Visual Arts, and urbanNovember (at the Maritime Museum). He has
been awarded the 2010 Aberdeen Visual Arts award for an exhibition of his
sound and video works premiering in 2011.
Thompson’s work encompasses many disciplines, including the use of live
electronics and software of his own design. In 2008 he had a residency at
STEIM in which he designed his own custom wired electronic instrument
using hacked electronics. Additionally, he has also developed his own visual
art software program called The Brakanator (after Stan Brakhage) for
creating live, interactive video works that react to his performances. His
performance set up is always variable, but he often uses found objects that
are amplified using contact microphones, a laptop running various software
programs-some that he has written himself, DJ-CD mixers, shortwave
radios, prepared guitar/harpsichord/autoharps, field recordings, found tapes,
as well as various synthesisers and circuit bent or custom built electronic
devices. He gives regular workshops and talks on circuit bending,
improvisation, field recording, and composition and often works directly with
local art students who require support for projects concerning sound.
Regardless of instrumentation, however, Thompson is critically aware of the
uniqueness of each performance situation. His work exploits the contingent
moment, paying attention to the unique space and time of each presentation
and explores the boundaries between improvisation, installation, found
objects, and composition. He has a particular interest in the ways in which
indeterminacy and perceptual ambiguity influence our perception of ‘now’,
presence, time and space. With each technique, he attempts in some way
to heighten this sense of the present, to make it somehow more important
than the future or past in the reception of each performance or
installation. Instead of attempting to create the ‘perfect’ object that
somehow transcends time, to be ‘of all time’, Thompson attempts to create
works that are specifically ‘of time’ and rooted within the moment and space
of its creation and reception.
Bill Thompson is available for performances, lectures, and workshops
concerning composition, improvisation, sound art, circuit bending, and
aesthetics. For more information contact him at:
[email protected].