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IN-DEPTH BIO
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Bill
Thompson
is an international sound artist
and composer who has performed extensively throughout
the UK and abroad. His work involves the combination of
found objects, field recordings, repurposed live electronics,
and digital media to create evolving sonic structures
for sound installations and live performance. Before relocating
to the UK in 2004 to undertake research for a PhD in Composition,
Thompson was active performing, writing, and curating
experimental music in the US for several years. Originally
a jazz guitarist who had attended the prestigious jazz
program at the University of North Texas at Denton, he
eventually found his way to Texas State University in
San Marcos where he earned his Masters degree in Composition
under Dr Russell Riepe. At Texas State, Thompson moved
beyond the guitar and wrote and performed on a wide range
of instruments including works for string quartet, cell
phones, found objects, radios, prepared guitar, laptop,
DJ-CD players, tape players, and various synthesisers
and table top electronics.
After
graduating, he immediately formed the gates ensemble which
at that time was the only regularly performing electroacoustic
ensemble in the Southwest with a focus on experimental
music and improvisation. He co-founded the curatorial
group ThomFariCraw, a modern music initiative dedicated
to the creation and presentation of the highest calibre
of modern experimental music, which hosted one of the
only house concert series (the loft series) in Texas that
focused on new experimental music. He helped found the
Austin New Music Coop which has presented works by Terry
Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Arnold Dreyblatt, Christian Wolff,
Cornelius Cardew, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Earle Brown,
as well as works by local composers. As a member of ANMC,
he conducted and gave the Texas premier of Earl Brown’s
Available Forms II. He also performed at and later co-curated
the Austin Museum of Digital Art’s Performance Series
which brought artists such as Richard Chartier and Phil
Niblock to Austin for the first time. He hosted the first
Phonography festival in Texas that played works from around
the world, as well as performing at various festivals
including Intersect 6, Toneburst, and the Austin Noise
Festival. Additionally, he designed and edited the e.m.i.t.
website (experimental music in Texas) that gave artist
within the Texas area a common virtual meeting point to
discuss performing, organizing, and attending new music
events in the Texas area.
Since
relocating to the UK, Thompson has been active as a performer,
composer, and sound artist. He has written for acoustic,
electro-acoustic, electronic, tape, and digital media,
including sound installations, dance, and video. He has
earned numerous awards and commissions including the PRS
for New Music ATOM award, the GAVAA visual arts award,
a Scottish Arts Council grant to support a residency at
STEIM, a PRS for New Music Three Festival commission (Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival, Le Weekend, and Aberdeen
SOUND festival), the Aberdeenshire Homecoming commission,
a Dancelive 2010 commission, and the 2010 Aberdeen Visual
Arts Award.
In
addition to working as a solo artist, Thompson has also
collaborated with numerous well known artists and choreographers
including Faust, Keith Rowe, Ian Spink, Claire Pencack,
Mark Wastell, Burkhard Beins, Rick Reed, and others, as
well as sharing the bill with other notable artists such
as John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, Toshi Nakamura, Billy
Roisz, Wolf Eyes, Disinformation & Strange Attractor,
murmur, and Lee Patterson. He is an avid supporter of
new music, having hosted the first conference on sound
art (SoundasArt) and the first Phonography festival in
Aberdeen. Thompson also regularly curates the Burning
Harpsichord Series, a concert programme devoted to showcasing
experimental music of the highest calibre.
Thompson
is also an active interpreter of works by other composers.
He has performed works by John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian
Wolf, Pauline Oliveros, Jon Gibson, Terry Riley, John
Zorn, and Edgar Varese to name but a few. His own works
have also been performed by other artists such as The
Red Note Ensemble, Thomas Helton, the Imbroglio String
Quartet, and the Hope ensemble. Thompson’s work has aired
on numerous radio programs including BBC Radio 3 Hear
and Now, BBC Radio 4, Resonance FM, RRR, fieldworks, Commercial
Suicide, and The Fog. He has been released on several
labels including State Sanctioned Records, 7hings Records,
Spectral House, Ecolirecords, Porkbones, Bremsstrahlung,
Autumn Records, and/Oar, throat, as well as having work
distributed by Deadline Records.
In addition to working as a composer and performer, Thompson
is also active as a sound and video artist and has had
numerous installations exhibited across the UK and US.
These include the Nexus project that showed in several
galleries across Scotland in 2007 and 2008, as well as
various installations for the SOUND festival of Aberdeen
(at the Aberdeen Train Station), the University of Aberdeen
(at the Marischall Museum), Peacock Visual Arts, and urbanNovember
(at the Maritime Museum). He has been awarded the 2010
Aberdeen Visual Arts award for an exhibition of his sound
and video works premiering in 2011.
Thompson’s work encompasses many disciplines, including
the use of live electronics and software of his own design.
In 2008 he had a residency at STEIM in which he designed
his own custom wired electronic instrument using hacked
electronics. Additionally, he has also developed his own
visual art software program called The Brakanator (after
Stan Brakhage) for creating live, interactive video works
that react to his performances. His performance set up
is always variable, but he often uses found objects that
are amplified using contact microphones, a laptop running
various software programs-some that he has written himself,
DJ-CD mixers, shortwave radios, prepared guitar/harpsichord/autoharps,
field recordings, found tapes, as well as various synthesisers
and circuit bent or custom built electronic devices. He
gives regular workshops and talks on circuit bending,
improvisation, field recording, and composition and often
works directly with local art students who require support
for projects concerning sound.
Regardless
of instrumentation, however, Thompson is critically aware
of the uniqueness of each performance situation. His work
exploits the contingent moment, paying attention to the
unique space and time of each presentation and explores
the boundaries between improvisation, installation, found
objects, and composition. He has a particular interest
in the ways in which indeterminacy and perceptual ambiguity
influence our perception of ‘now’, presence, time and
space. With each technique, he attempts in some way to
heighten this sense of the present, to make it somehow
more important than the future or past in the reception
of each performance or installation. Instead of attempting
to create the ‘perfect’ object that somehow transcends
time, to be ‘of all time’, Thompson attempts to create
works that are specifically ‘of time’ and rooted within
the moment and space of its creation and reception.
Bill Thompson is available for performances, lectures,
and workshops concerning composition, improvisation, sound
art, circuit bending, and aesthetics. For more information
contact him at: billthompson@billthompson.org.
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