Gene "Sxip" Shirey (pronounced "skip") is an American electric-acoustic composer, performer, and story-teller. Currently based in New York City, he is known for working with found objects, traditional and rare modified instruments, as well as computers and other electronic instruments. Shirey has released three solo albums, including ''Sonic New York'' in 2010. Shirey is a member of The Daredevil Opera Company and is a founding member of the band Luminescent Orchestrii, as well as the band Gentlemen & Assassins. He is the host and producer of ''Sxip's Hour of Charm'', a variety show of cabaret acts.

Early life

Shirey grew up in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. He graduated from

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subseq ...

, and having studied physics and folk guitar, he moved to New York in the late-1980s. He currently resides in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Career

Bands

Shirey started experimenting with

found sound Found objects are sometimes used in music, often to add unusual percussive elements to a work. Their use in such contexts is as old as music itself, as the original invention of musical instruments almost certainly developed from the sounds of nat ...

composition and extended instrument techniques when asked to compose music for

's modern dance department. This eventually took him to New York City and he has been performing in venues ranging from underground clubs in

to a

TED TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depa ...

, to Europe and to the Sydney Opera House. A founding member of the band Luminescent Orchestrii in 2002, Shirey has released three albums with The Luminescent Orchestrii and one EP on

Nonesuch Records Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, No ...

as a collaboration between Luminescent Orchestrii and the

Carolina Chocolate Drops The Carolina Chocolate Drops were an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina. Their 2010 album, '' Genuine Negro Jig,'' won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, and was number 9 in ''fRoots' ...

. Shirey is also a member of The Daredevil Opera Company.

Solo albums and scores

Shirey has released three solo albums, with the first in 2006. ''Statuesque '', a 2009 short film by Neil Gaiman with a score by Shirey, Lily Percy of NPR wrote "The work stars Bill Nighy and is silent save for Shirey's haunting score — marked by an assortment of moody piano melodies, bells and chimes — which sets the tone for a dramatic take on a ''Mannequin''-esque love story." It was featured in an 11 part series for Sky TV in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. His 2010 solo album ''Sonic New York'', '' Huffington Post'' wrote that "the collection of 17 pieces range from chanted poetry to raw blues to ghostly choirs to folk songs to a postmodern dance track and more."

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

reviewed the song "In Awe Of The City Skyline" in August 2010, describing it as "wistful," explaining that it "captures a singer's unique, complicated romance with New York City." The review also praised the duet between Shirey and Aimee Curl. He has had two songs featured as NPR's Song of the Day. One of his live performances at the time, which often feature Shirey recruiting audience members to assist with instruments, ''Huffington Post'' wrote "every noise wrung out of a piece of cheap plastic or kazoo or run through his complicated amplification, stood on its own and had something authentic to say about sound and its resonance with the human nervous system. It was experimental, but it was confident and real - definitely not ironic."

Performances

Previous performance highlights include featured presenter at TED, support act for Dresden Dolls US tour, Ashley Capp's Big Ears Festival,

Edinburgh Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

, Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia, Floyd Fest, Joe's Pub,

The Knitting Factory The Knitting Factory is a nightclub in New York City that features eclectic music and entertainment. After opening in 1987, various other locations were opened in the United States. The Knitting Factory gave its audience poetry readings, perform ...

and

CBGB's CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...

in New York City. He scored five

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

s such as " A Trip to the Moon" by Georges Méliès in collaboration with The

Museum of the Moving Image The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens, New York City. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the Amer ...

Queens, New York Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. Shirey has played exploding circus organ for the Daredevil Opera Company at the Sydney Opera House and the Kennedy Center, industrial flutes for acrobats at The

New Victory Theater The New Victory Theater is a theater at 209 West 42nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, near Times Square. Built in 1900 as the Republic Theatre (also Theatre Republic), it was designed by Albert Westover an ...

on Broadway, tamponophone with The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus at

Bonnaroo The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is an American annual four-day music festival developed and founded by Superfly Presents and AC Entertainment. Since its first year in 2002, it has been held at what is now Great Stage Park on a farm in M ...

hillbilly music Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks. The term was later used to refer to people from other rural and mountainous areas we ...

for

gypsies The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sign ...

Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...

. In a band called Gentlemen & Assassins with another member of

Dresden Dolls The Dresden Dolls are an American musical duo from Boston, Massachusetts. Formed in 2000, the group consists of Amanda Palmer (lead vocals and piano; additional: keyboards, harmonica, ukulele) and Brian Viglione (drums and backing vocals; addi ...

, Brian Viglione and Elyas Khan of

Nervous Cabaret Nervous Cabaret is an American punk-cabaret band from Brooklyn, New York, which formed in 2002. History The singer Elyas Khan's stage creation ''Fragmented Devotion To You'', an operetta he conceived, wrote, and scored the surrounding music ...

. They performed a show at Theater Dortmund with Sonic Youth and

producer

Martin Bisi Martin Bisi (born 1961) is an American producer and songwriter. He is known for recording important records by Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn, Material, Bill Laswell, Helmet, Unsane, The Dresden Dolls, Cop Shoot Cop, White Zombie, Boredoms, A ...

He is the host and producer of ''Sxip's Hour of Charm'', a variety show of cabaret acts. Hour of Charm regularly occurs in New York City, usually at

Joe's Pub Joe's Pub, one of the six performance spaces within The Public Theater, is a music venue and restaurant that hosts live performances across genres and arts, ranging from cabaret to modern dance to world music. It is located at 425 Lafayette St ...

, but has been taken on the road to the American Repertory Theatre, the

Rothbury Music Festival Electric Forest is a multi-genre music festival produced by Madison House Presents and Insomniac Events with a focus on electronic music and jam band genres. Original named Rothbury Festival in 2008, it is held in Rothbury, Michigan at the ...

and other venues. hirey also hosted and curated the multi-part ''Charm Sessions'' featuring live international music from NYC for Radio Scotland. Shirey has toured Ireland and Wales as a duo, "Sxip and Rhi" with Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Teaching

Shirey was invited to be a guest lecturer at the Norwegian Institute of Art in February 2012 and September 2013. The

English National Opera English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English ...

ran his workshop for young composers (and composing music for a short film) in March 2012. He has also run his workshop at

Trinity College, Oxford (That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody) , named_for = The Holy Trinity , established = , sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge , president = Dame Hilary Boulding , location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH , coordinates ...

England and for the animation department at Harvard.

Style and equipment

Shirey work utilizes found objects, traditional instruments, computer and modified instruments such as Industrial Flutes, Bullhorn Harmonicas, Regurgitated

Music Box A music box (American English) or musical box (British English) is an automatic musical instrument in a box that produces musical notes by using a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc to pluck the tuned teeth (or ''lamellae'' ...

, Triple Extended

Pennywhistle The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is a type of fipple flute, putting it in the same class as the recorder, Native American flute, and other woodwind instruments that meet such criteria. ...

s, Miniature

Handbell A handbell is a bell designed to be rung by hand. To ring a handbell, a ringer grasps the bell by its slightly flexible handle – traditionally made of leather, but often now made of plastic – and moves the arm to make the hinged cla ...

s, and other curious objects. Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer made a musical instrument, called the "Sxipenspiel" for Shirey's birthday. It is made of a candlestick, pipe and bicycle bells. A sample of Neil and Sxip playing it features at the beginning of Shirey's former Gentlemen & Assassins bandmate Elyas Khan's single, "Bells".

Discography

With The Luminescent Orchestrii

*2004: ''Luminescent Orchestrii'' *2007: ''Too Hot to Sleep'' *2009: ''Neptune's Daughter'' *2011: ''Carolina Chocolate Drops/Luminescent Orchestrii EP ''

With Gentlemen & Assassins

*2012: ''Mother Says We're Innocent''

Solo albums

Compositions

References

External links

SxipShirey.comSxip Shirey
on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

Sxip Shirey
on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

;Audio and video
Sxip Shirey
on

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...

Sxip Shirey
on

SoundCloud SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming s ...

Sxip Shirey
on MySpace
Sxip Shirey
on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shirey, Sxip American male composers 21st-century American composers People from Athens, Ohio Musicians from Ohio American people of Albanian descent Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Musicians from Appalachia Ohio University alumni 21st-century American male musicians

Early life

Career

Bands

Solo albums and scores

Performances

Teaching

Style and equipment

Discography

With The Luminescent Orchestrii

With Gentlemen & Assassins

Solo albums

Compositions

Further reading

See also

References

External links