Che Chen is a New York-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a central figure in the group
75 Dollar Bill.
Chen has collaborated with several influential avant-garde and improvisational musicians like
Jorge Boehringer
Jorge Boehringer is an electro-acoustic musician, composer, sound designer, and installation artist from the United States. He was born in New York in 1975, grew up in Texas, and in 1998 moved Oakland, California. He currently resides in Newcast ...
(
Core of the Coalman), Rolyn Hu,
Chie Mukai,
Tori Kudo
Maher Shalal Hash Baz is a Japanese music ensemble based in Japan, and the artistic alter ego of Tori Kudo, a Japanese composer and musician.The great Scots musicography Martin Charles Strong - 2002 Page 402 "Geographic records Founded: by Stephe ...
,
Tetuzi Akiyama and
Tony Conrad
Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both d ...
.
Chen grew up in a family of Taiwanese immigrants in the DC suburbs of Maryland.
In 2008, Chen began improvising regularly with fellow Brooklyn avant-rock improviser
Robbie Lee, a collaboration that lasted for several years and first surfaced as the limited-release album ''Begin and Continue!'' (2008). Lee and Chen’s album ''The Spectrum Does'' (2017) was originally recorded in 2011. The album credits Lee with flute, tarogato, melodica, great bass recorder, electronics, percussion and Chen with violin, harmonium, bass recorder, tape machine, electronics, percussion.
In 2010, Lee and Chen joined Dutch minimalist composer and lutenist
Jozef Van Wissem
Jozef van Wissem (born 22 November 1962) is a Dutch minimalist composer and lute player based in Brooklyn. In 2013 Van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for the score of ''Only Lovers Left Alive'' at the Cannes Film Festival.
Career
Jozef v ...
in his project Heresy of the Free Spirit, playing music described by the Chicago Reader as “a sublime mixture of country blues, old-time mountain music, and minimalist drone that features Van Wissem playing his lute with a slide.” The trio recorded an album in 2011, ''A Prayer for Light''.
Chen was a member of the band True Primes before 75 Dollar Bill, initially a duo with drummer Rick Brown, formerly of
V-Effect and
Curlew.
described 75 Dollar Bill's music as displaying "a certain kind of formal fullness and technical freedom," which he said has helped introduce
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
to a new generation.
Chen studied Moorish music in Mauretania with
Jheich Ould Chighaly in 2013.
75 Dollar Bill's first full-length album, ''Wooden Bag'', was released in 2015 by
Other Music Recording Company. Their second album, ''Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock'', was released in 2016 on the
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
-based label
Thin Wrist.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Che
Living people
21st-century American composers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Musicians from New York City