Jay Cloidt

JAY CLOIDT is a composer and sound designer working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was born and raised in a small town in Nebraska. After receiving his BA in piano performance, he moved to Seattle and worked as a professional rock and blues musician in the 1970’s before being “born again” as a contemporary music composer. He studied at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College with Robert Ashley and David Behrman. He has collaborated with many groups, beginning with the late Ed Mock’s dance company (with a performance at the Vienna Biennale), and including the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, the Gary Palmer Dance Company, ODC/San Francisco, California EAR Unit and Kronos Quartet. His works have been performed extensively by these groups and others throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including performances at Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall, the Concertgebouw, and many other venues. Notable projects from the past few years include many dance scores for ODC/SF, San Francisco’s premiere modern dance company, including: Flight to Ixcan, choreographed by Kimi Okada in collaboration with visual artist Claudia Bernardi; Spectral Evidence, choreographed by Brenda Way and featuring the Cypress String Quartet live and real-time video processing by artist Jim Campbell; Noir, also with Ms. Way, and featuring a quartet of Bay Area jazz musicians led by virtuoso guitarist Will Bernard, and In Memory of the Forest, a studio piece featuring musicians Carla Kihlstedt and Ned Rothenberg. Other recent major projects include Span, a piece for solo piano commissioned by pianist Vicki Ray of the California EAR Unit and based on the music of Jerry Lee Lewis; music for the feature film Send Word, directed by Lynn Feinerman; and Crosstalk, a “duet for pianist and piano”, commissioned by Nancy Karp + Dancers. He produced a CD of Paul Dresher’s music theater works, Anybody’s Land, to be released in 2011. A CD of the music from D’Arc: Woman on Fire was being released on MinMax Records in 2009 (MM016); this is the fruit of a theater piece created in 2007 with writer/singer/actress Amanda Moody, and features Amanda’s vocals along with performances by cellists Joan Jeanrenaud, Danielle DeGruttola, and Elaine Kreston. A CD of two string quartets, eleven windows and Spectral Evidence, performed by the Cypress String Quartet, was released on MinMax Records in 2007 (MM015). A CD of electronic music, Dark Matter is available on Phthalo (PH42); and a recording of his chamber music and electronic works, Kole Kat Krush, is available on Starkland Records (ST-208). The American Record Guide called Kole Kat Krush “… creative and attention-grabbing … haunting and original”; and the AMG All Music Guide described it as “a wonderful, accessible, and yet challenging album from one of new music's brightest lights.”