About
Bio

About N F Chase
by Lemia Mahayni (Vancouver BC)
If you just listened to an unusual piece of music and you couldn’t identify all the instruments that were used, you may have been listening to a Nicholas Chase composition. “Even to people who know me, I’m totally enigmatic in terms of style...but there are tells,” says Chase. One tell is his knack for fully assimilating unusual instruments into his music, rather than featuring them. Playing a music stand with a bow, working a DJ turntable, and reggae-dub melodica have been elements of his compositions in the past. Because they are fully incorporated, unless you catch a live performance, you may not be able to identify the sounds, or realize that they are not computer generated. As he puts it, “I really do integrate things, I’m not a gimmick guy.” The result has been described by the LA Times as “the Rite of Spring meets Metallica.”
           
Chase was first recognized by the media in April of 2000, when the LA Times made his MFA Thesis a featured ‘pick’ in the Editor’s Profile. That multimedia ‘rave’ opera, e1>3ktr=A [Elektra], integrated traditional opera singing with industrial drum and bass musical accompaniment, DJ turntables, video, and a set that was a costume rigged with speakers. But the piece of music that put him on the map was sP!t, which used DJ turntables as instruments. After a very well received premier performance at California Institute of the Arts, sP!t was included in the programming of the California E.A.R. Unit for two years, and a subsequent piece commissioned, also to be featured by the California E.A.R. Unit. Later, his work with improvising trio NIRUSU III earned him the moniker “eye/ear explorer” from the LA Weekly. He has consistently been recognized in the United States and Europe, with nods like the Andy Warhol Competition Performance Award and a recent residency at theJanaçek Academy of Music in the Czech Republic.
           
He counts himself fortunate to have been taught by seminal modern music masters like James Tenney, Stephen L. (“Lucky”) Mosko, Bunita Marcus, and Morton Subotnick, to name a few. “My best teachers didn’t teach me about music, specifically. We got along because we shared a philosophy. As a student, I didn’t know how to activate my philosophy. They taught me about how to live life, and out of that person comes the music that I write.” As a composer, he has clearly become fully ‘activated.’
           
He initially trained in the visual arts and graphic design, even exhibiting and, recently, working as both an exhibits director and a gallery director in that field. Coming from this hybrid background, he feels strongly that composition “is a gateway between disciplines.” He believes that gateway would not only lead to greater understanding between disciplines, but also create a climate in which art as a whole would grow in new and exciting ways. “People in the arts should learn composition and then apply it to their discipline rather than learning the discipline first, which closes doors between disciplines, because people speak different jargons and reference different works.” He recently began writing his manifesto, which extends to all art forms. “One of my missions is to demystify the hierarchy of art. There should be no boundaries between Deadmau5 and someone composing for an orchestra. They should be able to exchange ideas as equals.”
           
In August of 2009, Chase moved from the West Coast to Troy, New York, for PhD work at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where the Electronic Arts program has recently expanded to include a practice-based PhD program. For Chase, the move was “an opportunity to explore my work through research.” The “change in geography” also allows him access to a new audience as well as proximity to New York City, where he performed his integrated media work, Transmissions, at the 2008 Whitney Museum Biennial Celebration, and also Europe, where he is more recognized than in the United States. “It’s a traditional jumping off point for artists,” he says.
           
Chase is in the process of forming his own performing company under the rubric of Chase Ateliers and is currently working on a number of new compositions and concerts for recent works. April 17th, he will reprise his widely admired work Ngoma Lundgundu (Voice that Thunders) at the Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in New York’s Capital Region, and in May he will preview his new works Solifuge and Voluptuous. Chase is also a recognized lecturer and will present his most recent paper, Unboxing Infinity, on Media and Art to the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place at their 2010 conference from April 30th – May 2nd.

Biography
Alpert Award Nominee, Nicholas Chase's work has been hailed by Strad Magazine as 'brilliant,' the Los Angeles Times as 'flamboyant, avant-garde' and 'brawling yet taut...the Rite of Spring meets Metallica,' by the Albuquerque Journal as 'crackling, witty,' by the Whittier Press as 'seamless, powerful... spectacular' and, dubbing him 'Eye/Ear Explorer,' the LA Weekly writes of his short opera 22 (Taker of the Total Chance), 'the human brain at its most imaginative.'

Chase earned his MFA in Composition/New Media and Integrated Media studying with Morton Subotnick, Bunita Marcus, Stephen L. Mosko, and additionally with Ziad Bunni of the Aleppo Conservatory of Arabic Classical Music, James Tenney, Christian Wolf and Zhou Long.

Chase's chamber works have been performed by the California E.A.R. Unit, New Zealand's 175 East, South West Chamber Music and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony from whom he received a joint award from the Symphony and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for the Andy Warhol-inspired work tw!TcH. His electronic audio/visual interactive work has been featured as part of the Illuminated Corridor in San Francisco, the Center for Electronic Art, Information and Technology (CEAIT) Festival in Los Angeles, and a concert of his electro-acoustic compositions was featured in 2003 as part of Stanford University's "Music from the Edge" contemporary music festival at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Chase has been commissioned by the California E.A.R. Unit, the Long Beach Opera, Viola Plus, Ltd. as well as Swiss bassist Cristin Wildbolz, first violin of New York's Ensemble Sospeso, Mark Menzies and internationally renown flutist Dorothy Stone to name a few.

As a performer, Chase is former frontman to the pop act Soul Parish, who topped the European Indie/Gothic club charts in 1995 with their dance single Lilith. Chase has since appeared performing electronics and DJ turntables with his own touring ensemble, with the California E.A.R. Unit, and most recently performing interactive video and sound with renown harpist/improviser, Susan Allen, and British bassist, Rus Pearson, collectively known as NIRUSU III, and who opened the 2006 Edgetone Music Summit in San Francisco to outstandingly positive acclaim.

Chase is founder of the Egg Ensemble whose serial film/performance project Eleven Ideas (eleven.mas-lab.org) has been performed and screened at venues in Hollywood, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Helsinki. Chase is also Founding Director of the Musical Arts/Sound Laboratory (www.mas-lab.org) and Chase Ateliers, an organization committed to inter-disciplinary and experimental collaborations.

Recent works include the world premieres of Considering Light by the Sonic Liberation Players in Los Angeles, the Ngoma Lungundu (Voice That Thunders) and Songs of the Thirsty Sword - Part I for piano, interactive electronics and video headlining two festival openings (New Music Plus+ - Czech Republic, Music By The Eyeful – San Francisco), and the world-premiere presentation of Transmissions, an interactive audio/video street composition as part of a collaborative, public installation at the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

Additionally Blue Sky Over Buchenwald, sound track to Wie kann es so schoen in Buchenwald sein?, the Alternativer Medienpreis-nominated documentary on the Buchenwald Concentration camp of World War II and Ngoma Lungundu have just been released on iTunes along with the US release of Seventh Sense (STV/Unit in Switzerland) for bass and interactive electronics.

Upcoming events include the concert premiere of a revised version of Songs of the Thirsty Sword, as well as a recital of new solo+multi-channel electronics and video works that will tour the US and Europe in 2010.

Chase returns from the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany where he  taught visual media and worked with students from Tonji University, Shanghai, collaborating with the BauhausFM Experimental Radio to work toward the PhD in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.