Jennifer Walshe: Women Make Music
In collaboration with Third Ear Music, Jennifer Walshe will create a new piece for PANDAMONIUM 2, a special event and catwalk type performance curated by Artwise Curators marking the 50th anniversary of the World Wildlife Fund, the world’s leading conservation organization. The piece will draw on one of three ‘featured themes’ for WWF’s celebration: forest, water of snow/ice, and reference a particular aspect of WWFs work: conservation, climate change or sustainability. Crossing boundaries between music, visual art, film and fashion, the work will feature in PANDAMONIUM 2 as part of London Fashion Week.
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1974. She studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Kevin Volans in Dublin and graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition in June 2002.
Jennifer’s work has been performed and broadcast all over the world and she has received commissions from organizations including Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Sudwest Rundfunk (SWR), the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, Maerzmusik, Musik der Jahrhundert, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Dresdener Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik, Wien Modern, the Dresden Semper Oper, ZKM (Karslruhe), the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, the Project Arts Centre and the National Concert Hall, Ireland, as well as commission awards from the New Music Scheme of the Arts Council of Ireland and the Scottish Arts Council. In 2003-04 Jennifer was composer-in-residence at the National Sculpture Factory, Cork. In 2000 Jennifer won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, and received first prize in the SCI/ASCAP 2002 Commission Competition.
In addition to her activities as a composer, Jennifer frequently performs as a vocalist, specialising in extended techniques. Many of her recent compositions were commissioned for her voice in conjunction with other instruments, and her works have been performed by her and others at festivals worldwide. Jennifer is also active as an improviser, performing regularly with musicians in Europe and the U.S., and in her duo Ma La Pert with Tony Conrad.
Recent projects of note include Grúpat, a project in which Walshe assumed nine different alter egos – all members of art collective Grúpat – and created compositions, installations, graphic scores, films, photography, sculptures and fashion under these alter egos. Pieces by Grúpat members have been performed and exhibited all over the world, most notably at the Dublin Electronic Arts Festival; Kilkenny Arts Festival; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Tmu-na Theater, Tel Aviv and Festival Rümlingen, Switzerland. In 2009 Grúpat were the feature of a major retrospective at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, which coincided with the launch the book Grúpat by Project Press and the release of two CDs featuring Jennifer’s music. In 2010 Walshe’s fourth opera The Geometry was premiered at The Chocolate Factory, New York, and new works by members of Grúpat were shown at a solo exhibition titled NO IRISH NEED APPLY at Chelsea Art Museum New York.