Jennifer Walshe

Biography

Jennifer Walshe (born 1 June 1974) is an Irish composer, vocalist and artist.

Biography

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 (Evanston, IL) with a doctoral degree in composition in June 2002. Her chief teachers at Northwestern were Amnon Wolman and Michael Pisaro. In 2003–04 Walshe was a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; during 2004–05 she lived in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. From 2006 to 2008 she was the composer-in-residence in South Dublin County for In Context 3. Walshe received a 2007 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 2008 she was awarded the Praetorius Music Prize for Composition by the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur. In 2014 she was invited as guest curator for the Danish music and sound art festival SPOR festival.
Walshe's work has been performed all over the world by ensembles such as Alter Ego, ensemble recherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, ensemble Intégrales, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Schlagquartett Köln, Crash Ensemble, Con Tempo Quartet, Trio Scordatura, Ensemble Ascolta, Champ d'Action, ensemble laboratorium, ensemble surplus, the Rilke Ensemble, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble, Bozzini Quartet, Callino Quartet, Ensemble 2000, Concorde, Kaleidoscop, Black Hair, Continuum, Musica Nova Consort, ensemble chronophonie, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Quintet, the Hebrides Ensemble, Psappha, and Q-02 among others.
She has received commissions from organisations including Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Südwest 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 Semperoper, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 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 Walshe was composer-in-residence at the National Sculpture Factory, Cork. In 2000 she 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 July 2002 she returned to Darmstadt to lecture in composition at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. Her work was shortlisted for the 2002 and 2003 Gaudeamus Foundation composition prizes.
In addition to her activities as a composer, Walshe 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 such as RTÉ Living Music (Dublin), Båstad Kammarmusik Festival (Sweden), Ultraschall (Berlin), Ars Musica (Brussels), Steirischer Herbst, Wien Modern, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Late Music Festival (York), Hamburger Klangwerktage, Gaida (Lithuania), BMIC Cutting Edge, Composer's Choice (Dublin), SoundField (Chicago) the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt, Stockholm New Music, BELEF (Belgrade), Traiettorie (Parma), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), SPOR (Denmark), Frau musica nova (Cologne), Performa (New York), Electric Eclectics (Canada), Reihe 0 (Austria), Ergodos (Dublin), Music at the Anthology (New York) and the 17th edition of the Sonic Acts Festival: The Noise of Being (Amsterdam). Walshe is also active as an improviser, performing regularly with musicians in Europe and the US.
Recent projects of note include Grúpat, a two-year 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 & Design, New York; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Ultrasound Festival, Tel Aviv and Festival Rümlingen, Switzerland. In February 2009 Grúpat were the feature of a retrospective at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, which coincided with the launch of the book Grúpat by Project Press and the release of two CDs featuring Walshe's music written under her Grúpat alter egos. Walshe is part of the first edition of the Monheim Triennale.
Since 2016, Walshe has been Professor at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. She has taught, held lectures, and performed workshops within the framework of conferences and festivals, and has acted as a mentor at the Forecast program in Berlin. In 2019, The Guardian ranked XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! (2003) the 25th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Kate Molleson stating that "she yanks off the plastic veneer of commercial culture by parodying then systematically dismembering the archetypes."
As of 2021, Walshe is Professor of Composition at the University of Oxford.