Cindy Cox
Transparent yet intricate, Cindy Cox’s compositions synthesize old and new musical designs. The natural world and ecological concerns inspire many of the special harmonies and textural colorations in her works.
Cox is active as a pianist and has performed and recorded many of her own compositions, including the large-scale Hierosgamosand Sylvan Pieces. A number of her works feature technologies developed at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), such as Pianos and the Etudes for piano sampler keyboards. Her compositions with text such as Singing the lines, The Other Side of the World, and The Shape of the Shell evolved through collaboration with her husband, poet John Campion. Together they are currently collaborating on a musical theater project, The Road to Xibalba, based on the ancient Mayan myth of creation The Popol Vuh.
She has received awards and commissions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, the American Composers Forum, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, the Fulbright Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Toulmin Foundation with the League of American Orchestras. She has been a Fellow at Tanglewood, Aspen, the MacDowell Colony, Civitella Ranieri, and Giardini La Mortella.
Recent performances have taken place at the Venice Biennale, the Festival de la Habana in Cuba, the American Academy in Rome, Carnegie and Merkin Halls in New York City, the National Gallery in Washington, the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, and the Biblioteca National in Buenos Aires. Her music has been performed by the Kronos Quartet, the National Symphony, the California Symphony, the Alexander Quartet, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Eco Ensemble. Recordings are available on Innova, Naxos (Foghorn Classics), Albany, New World (CRI), and Arpa Viva.
Cindy Cox is also a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Cox
Elegy—Zakarias Grafilo
Cox
The Shape of the Shell
text by John Campion
bass clarinet/voice by Laura Carmichael
My daughter brought a shell and bade me put my ear to it:
—That’s the sound of the ocean, I said.
—Is the ocean inside of it, she asked?
—The shape of the shell causes the sound, I said.
—Then the ocean is the shaper of things, said Sophia. You throw a stick out into the water and it comes back looking like a fish.