composer /// performer /// builder
Photographer Daniel Pepper. Heroines of Sound Festival 2023
HEATHER FRASCH, is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic concert music, performer/composer (flute, laptop/electronics & D.I.Y sonic objects), and creator of interactive sound installations and digital instruments. Through the creation of complex timbres, the usage of experimental notation systems, and unstable design in the electronics, her work explores notions of fragility and stillness. Influenced by the dis-embodiment of acousmatic music practices, she investigates the re-embodiment of sound and the intimacy between humans and their technological objects. She is interested in asking questions and finding the unexpected through a creative practice. By using different mediums, she is able to look at her investigations through various lenses. She is excited when previous notions are challenged and broken, making room for new ideas to emerge.
Currently she is exploring the potential of acoustic objects as physical filters in a collaborative installation project with Rebecca Lane using resonating spheres; designing a series of works for chamber ensembles that extends her work as a soloist which blends together kinetic objects and synthesizers; and composing works for acoustic instruments that uses fragile performance techniques to create complex quivering soundscapes.
Frasch holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She is Associate Professor of Music Technologies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway where she teaches courses in the Creative Applications of Music Technology including: Sound Art, electronic music composition, hacking, interdisciplinary installations & digital music performance. Honors include: an Arbeitsstipendien für Ernste Musik und Klangkunst from Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (2021); the George Ladd Prix de Paris in Composition (2008), composer-in-residence at the IEM (Institüt für Musik und Akustik) in Graz, Austria (2015), Course for Young Composers at IRCAM (2009) and the Nicol DeLorernzo Prize in Composition (2010 and 2008). Frasch’s work has been supported by: Musikfonds e. V., Initiative Neue Musik Berlin and Kulturförderung des Goethe-Instituts. She co-edits mumei publishing which publishes online journals and monographs that concern text-sound perceptions. She is co-director of vibrant matter, who curate events, investigating the blurred boundaries between text/object and sound. Both projects champion experimental interdisciplinary programming, commissioning new works to support underrepresented voices. Born in Philadelphia, Frasch was Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition and Computer Technologies at The University of Virginia (2018-2020), tutor of electronic music at the Catalyst Institute for Creative Arts & Technology in Berlin (2021), and Guest Composer at The Norwegian Academy of Music 2022/23.
Upcoming performances and exhibitions: here