Jay Cloidt (born October 5, 1949) is an American composer, performer, sound designer, and audio engineer.

History

Cloidt received his BA in piano performance from the University of Nebraska and his MFA in Electronic Music and the Recording Media from Mills College Center for Contemporary Music in 1981, studying with

Robert Ashley Robert Reynolds Ashley (March 28, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American composer, who was best known for his television operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. His works often involve i ...

and

David Behrman David Behrman (born August 16, 1937) is an American composer and a pioneer of computer music. In the early 1960s he was the producer of Columbia Records' ''Music of Our Time'' series, which included the first recording of Terry Riley's ''In C''. ...

. As a sound designer, he has worked with many groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the

Kronos Quartet The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for almost 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres, including contemporary classic ...

and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Cloidt's work on the

Paul Dresher Paul Joseph Dresher (born January 8, 1951 in Los Angeles) is an American composer. Dresher received his B.A. in music from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. in composition from the University of California, San Diego, where he st ...

Ensemble's production of Slow Fire won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award, and he received an Isadora Duncan Award in 1989 with Rinde Eckert for the sound design of Eckert's Dry Land Divine. As a composer, Cloidt has been commissioned by such organizations as the Gary Palmer Dance Company, the

Ensemble, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and the

, for whom he has written three pieces. His music typically uses electronics, is technically sophisticated, and often contains humor. The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' has called Cloidt "The Spike Jones of the Bay Area new music scene." His music has been performed at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, New Music America, and

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

. His solo CD ''Kole Kat Krush'' was released by

Starkland Starkland is an independent record label based in Boulder, Colorado that specializes in alternative classical music. It was founded in 1991 by Thomas Steenland. Starkland's first two CDs offered all the principal 1960s music from the "organized s ...

. ''All-Music Guide'' awarded the CD four stars and wrote that the CD is “a wonderful, accessible, and yet challenging album from one of new music's brightest lights.” ''Stereophile'' also awarded the CD four stars, describing Cloidt as "one of the few composers in the post-sampler era to fully develop that tool's fascinating and witty potential." Other recordings appear on the MinMax label. In 1999, he also composed music for Leapfrog until 2009 ish. On October 20, 2017, a retrospective concert and celebration of Cloidt's works - "The Music of Jay Cloidt" - was performed at UC Berkeley's Hertz Concert Hall. Featuring Bay-area musicians and performing artists, the concert included works for the Sather Tower carillon, the Eco Ensemble String Quartet, solo piano, a “duet for pianist and piano” with interactive electronics, and music from the music theater work Darc: Woman on fire for singer and cellist.

Discography

Kole Kat KrushSpectral EvidenceD'Arc: woman on fire

References

* Starkland (1999). Main notes. In Kole Kat Krush (p. 4) D liner notes Boulder, CO: Starkland.
Biography at Paul Dresher Ensemble website

External links

* Golden, Barbara. “Conversation with Jay Cloidt.�

(April 2010). Montréal: CEC. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cloidt, Jay 1949 births Living people 20th-century classical composers University of Nebraska–Lincoln alumni Male classical composers 20th-century male musicians