B i o g r a p h y
THE LATEST:
My most contemporary flourishing, uplifting, and inspiring expedition this past Spring 2023 was with Improvisers Exchange, an omni-idiomatic improvisation ensemble directed and organized by Jason Finkelman in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Within this cooperative playful vector, I found time and place for exploring my creativity generating piano, percussion, and vocal timbres, in sonic conversation with other amazing creatives in the ensemble, consequently forming a bond. Teachings of Pauline Oliveros and Karl Berger were particularly incorporated. Workshops engaged with improviser-composers Jason Kao Hwang, world-renowned didgeridooist William Barton, experimental vocalist Roco Cordova, multi-genre flutist Giovanni Perez, and Angels and Demons, an experimental duo of saxophonist Darius Jones and vocalist Amirtha Kidambi who transmit the poetry of Sun Ra through their sounds. We also partook in performances every first Monday of the month, housed at the Rosebowl Tavern. This was a new wave for me to ride, and I’m looking for more.
The last year has also focused on composing chamber music within connection to a mentorship with the algorithmic and electro-acoustic composer and professor Sever Tipei, whose art and music parties have been in congruence to my sense of divergent whim.
A 2020 commission by the Bernal Hills Players brought to life my Brazilian-inspired A Dança da Sobrevivência, composed in the same year, and later premiered within their Spring 2023 tour Forces of Nature.
My last few years of projects have extended beyond the Avant-garde and free improvisation, embracing Brazilian Music and Arts. Brazil, with all its diversity in people, also presents an array of diverse music historically formed through fusions of various cultures, creating something new, something distinctly Brazilian. I have always particularly enjoyed Bossa Nova and Tropicália, and a few years back branched out to other genres. More recently in the Fall of 2021 I joined a Samba percussion bateria called Bloco Gavião, whom with I mainly played the Surdo, Agogo, and tried a number of other instruments. By the following Spring 2022, I began learning the art-dance-game-fight of Capoeira Angola, as well as the Berimbau and other Capoeria instruments, from Contre-Mestre Denis Chiaramonte, disciple of Mestre João Grande.
Additional research over the last few years has centered on women in music around the world, especially Brazilian women in Brazilian music. In the last year, I also delved into piano tech, particularly focusing on the Austrian Bösendorfer and the Australian Stuart and Sons pianos. Fall of 2022 I had the fun opportunity trying a beginning piano technician class with Dr. Timothy Ehlen.
ACTIVITY OF THE LESS-RECENT PAST:
In response to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2020, I was invited to partake in a group composition where 19 composers created music to convey any aspect of the epidemic. Titled CO-19, this collective collage was recorded by the Playground Ensemble at Mighty Fine Productions brought to the world VIRTUALLY via YouTube.
In 2019 I was accepted to attend the Creative Musicians Retreat at the Walden Music School, partially funded by a Faculty Grant I won from the SF Community Music Center. During the intense “retreat” week I had an enriching time gaining insight from composers Osnat Netzer and George Lewis. Featured within the Walden Composers Forum was my piece Vignettes, performed by percussionist Matt Gold, and members of the Mivos Quartet, violist Victor Lowrie Tafoya, and violoncellist Tyler J. Borden.
Other compositional activities have included exploring various types of computer music and digital audio classes. Summer 2018 I was awarded the Diversity in Computer Music Scholarship to attend a weeklong workshop at Stanford University studying the SuperCollider programming environment.
In 2013 I was awarded a Faculty Grant from the San Francisco Community Music Center to fund my local-premiere of matins: three nocturnes, performed by Katy Luo and featured in a community concert I organized called All Shades Between......an eventide concert of light and dark pieces, hosted at the San Francisco Community Music Center.
Performances of my ouvre have also been featured by the experimental sfSound Group at the Center for New Music in SF, in the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Temescal Experiment as part of the Oakland Art Murmur at the Temescal Arts Center, the Outsound Series at the Luggage Store Gallery SF, featured artist at the Meridian Gallery’s Composers in Performance Series in SF, New Keys Concerts starring pianist Regina Meyers (Schaffer), and with the Bay Area Composers’ Circle.
I get a kick out of performing with the Cornelius Cardew Choir, an avant-garde experimental performance-art ensemble of composer-performer-improvisers, led by composer Tom Bickley. With the Cardew Choir I had the opportunity in 2011 to perform with composer Pauline Oliveros in her Tower Ring at the Oliver Ranch, an independent art grounds in Geyserville, CA.
BACKGROUND:
I grew up in an eclectic musical household in Sonoma County, CA, where my ears witnessed many musics: Bach Cantatas, Monteverdi, the Rolling Stones, Robert Johnson, the Kingston Trio, my mother sight-reading Clementi at the piano, and my father’s Appalachian strummin’ and a hollerin,’ and then some !! My parents decided to tune up my mom’s old clunker piano that had a prior life moving across the U.S., withstanding several garages and 30 years in a bar, so that I may start piano lessons. Upon the piano technician opening the upper front board of the cabinet, a shriek came from my mother, followed by scorn from my parents at the sight of the piano full of the melting chewable vitamins I hated. And there was the start of my healthy music profession. I began piano lessons with a hippy lady who eventually disappeared to India. After a switch to a new teacher and a lot of resistance to practice, I eventually turned around and passionately trained as a classical pianist, resulting in an adolescence full of performance, auditions, competitions, and winning awards. Piano was so much my life that I got my first job in high school to buy a new Yamaha piano (not a car, as most kids want to buy). In my first year of college, when my rebellious teenage spirit met the revolutions of Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky, my focus began to transition to composition. Twentieth Century music fueled me to follow suite in spirit. Raised with self-independent values, I explored untaught and instantly found my own compositional voice. This was reinforced and supported by professor Will Johson who encouraged me to strike out and embrace “my own music.” I ganged up with some other youth to form a Composers’ Club, and organized concerts at the local Junior College. Moving on to continue studying music at U.C. Berkeley, I continued to compose unsupervised. Nonetheless, I gained meaty composition lessons by virtue of required classes such as music history, ethnomusicology, music theory, counterpoint, orchestration, and piano training, which all required study and analysis of composition. The last semester of my B.A. in Music, I was finally able to take my first official composition class, an opportunity with the late Jorge Liderman. After my B.A. in music at U.C. Berkeley, I continued composing independently, organized concerts of my music, and via composers’ organizations. Not much later, I entered and completed a Masters in Composition at the SF Conservatory.
AS A TEACHER:
My experience has grown wide and large teaching within a number of areas of music at a number of schools with all ages of people. For 10 years with the San Francisco Community Music Center I was an ensemble director and arranger, theory and musicianship instructor for the Young Musicians’ Program, as well as a private teacher in those areas, piano, and composition. I also had a year’s time as Artist in Residence at the San Francisco School for the Arts where I taught music theory and musicianship. My teaching occupation began when I was in high school (which also helped me buy a piano), and I still currently teach classes and private lessons in piano, composition, improvisation, theory, and musicianship.
ADDITIONALLY:
Outside of music, I am concerned with social justice, international feminisms, environmentalism, science, nature, being outdoors, kayaking, hiking, and backpacking. I am most proud of having back-packed Mt. Olympus alone, and another trip digging and camping in my own snow-trench in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
DEGREES:
Masters of Music - San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Bachelor of Arts - University of California, Berkeley
Associate of Arts Degree in Music - Santa Rosa Junior College
My website is http://www.SarahStiles.com