about the artist.
Honolulu, 2016
Born and raised in the wild state of Idaho, performer/composer Gretchen Jude has been heard across the globe, from Seoul to Helsinki. Improvisatory interaction with the immediate environment forms the core of Gretchen’s sonic practice. Ongoing collaborations include glou glou (voice & electronics) and Eat The Sun (koto). Gretchen works actively with choreographers such as Peiling Kao (in their duo, electroViolet). Gretchen's work has been released by Full Spectrum, Susu Ultrarock, and Edgetone.
Gretchen has studied a variety of performance practices, including: music improvisation with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell & Zeena Parkins; voice technique with Molly Holm, Giselle Wyers & Jonathan Nadel; Japanese musics (nagauta & hauta shamisen, voice & jiuta koto) with Makoto Nishimura, Shibahime, Curtis Patterson & Etsuko Takezawa; and audio composition with Ted Apel, John Bischoff, James Fei, Jeff Lubow & Nic Collins.
Gretchen holds an M.F.A. in Electronic Music & Recording Media from Mills College (2011) and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from University of California, Davis (2018), along with certification from Sawai Koto Institute and Deep Listening Institute.
As an artist, Gretchen explores the liminal spaces between natural & artificial, tradition & experimentation, self & other; she tends to wander various borderlands of contemporary experience. As a composer, she approaches music composition as 'a channel for the desire to sing' (to paraphrase sonologist Joel Ryan paraphrasing choreographer William Forsythe). Her work aims to synthesize and harmonize personal, embodied experience with the rapid changes in culture and machinery that both empower and impinge upon us.
Gretchen has studied a variety of performance practices, including: music improvisation with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell & Zeena Parkins; voice technique with Molly Holm, Giselle Wyers & Jonathan Nadel; Japanese musics (nagauta & hauta shamisen, voice & jiuta koto) with Makoto Nishimura, Shibahime, Curtis Patterson & Etsuko Takezawa; and audio composition with Ted Apel, John Bischoff, James Fei, Jeff Lubow & Nic Collins.
Gretchen holds an M.F.A. in Electronic Music & Recording Media from Mills College (2011) and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from University of California, Davis (2018), along with certification from Sawai Koto Institute and Deep Listening Institute.
As an artist, Gretchen explores the liminal spaces between natural & artificial, tradition & experimentation, self & other; she tends to wander various borderlands of contemporary experience. As a composer, she approaches music composition as 'a channel for the desire to sing' (to paraphrase sonologist Joel Ryan paraphrasing choreographer William Forsythe). Her work aims to synthesize and harmonize personal, embodied experience with the rapid changes in culture and machinery that both empower and impinge upon us.