Profiles
Dubbed by L.A. Weekly as an "Eye/Ear Explorer", US composer N F Chase's music has been performed internationally by the likes of the California EAR Unit, Southwest Chamber Music, New Zealand's 175 East, Long Beach Opera and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony. His electro-acoustic composition has been featured at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Holland, and as part of the Weimar/New York festival in Weimar, Germany.
Chase is founder of the Musical Art/Sound Laboratory (Chase Ateliers) whose trans-disciplinary work has been exhibited in festivals across the US and Europe. Chase's work with improvising trio NIRUSU III has been acclaimed by the L.A. Weekly as "pushing the edge of audio/visual improv," while his interactive audio/visual composition Transmission was featured with the Illuminated Corridor's NOVA at the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
Chase's work with narrative media can be seen/heard in the serial film/performance project Eleven Ideas (eleven.mas-lab.org), performed and screened at venues in Hollywood, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Helsinki and most recently on WMHT television in New York's Capital Region and Blue Sky Over Buchenwald, sound track to Wie kann es so schön in Buchenwald sein? the Alternativer Medienpreis-nominated documentary on the Buchenwald Concentration camp.
As a performer, Chase is former frontman to the pop act Soul Parish, who topped the European Indie/Gothic club charts 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 with his newly formed UFOrchestra.
Recent activities include the world premieres of Considering Light for the Sonic Liberation Players in Los Angeles, Ngoma Lungundu and Songs of the Thirsty Sword for piano, interactive electronics and video, headlining two festival openings (New Music Plus+ – Czech Republic, Music By The Eyeful – San Francisco), the world premiere of New York Above Ground for ensemble performing in the street, as part of the Darmstadt/New York Festival at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room. Last spring Chase received a Composer Fellowship from the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, who commissioned and premiered Gin Blossoms & Broccoli Boutonnières for flute and interactive electronics.
Chase earned his MFA from California Institute of the Arts 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 returns to the US 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. He is currently in residency at Jack Straw Productions in Seattle where he is composing, performing and recording volumes 2 and 3 of his Velvet Watt series.