Christopher McIntyre leads a multi-faceted career in the contemporary arts as a composer, solo and ensemble performer, and curator/organizer. The diversity of his activities led Time Out New York to note "...with every passing week, trombonist-composer Chris McIntyre becomes more central to the new-music experience in New York." (Nov. '09) He performs a wide variety of material on trombone and Nord synthesizer, ranging from fully notated concert works to open improvisations. Current projects include solo work (including the upcoming debut of his Meta Trombone program), leading TILT Brass, 7X7 Trombone Band, and "dhum rock" band UllU, and collaborative efforts including the creative music ensemble Ne(x)tworks. McIntyre's trombone skills have been utilized by Merce Cunningham Dance Co. (Legacy Tour including Park Ave Armory Events), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tri-Centric Orchestra, SEM Ensemble, Flexible Orchestra, The Knights, and as a member of Either/Or. He has also participated in numerous composer-led projects, including those of Anthony Braxton, Zeena Parkins, John King, David First, Michael Schumacher, Elliott Sharp, Charles Waters, Jonathan Bepler (w/ Matthew Barney), and Anthony Coleman. Recordings of his work can be heard on New World, Tzadik, Mode, and Non-Site Records, and on Archive.org.
McIntyre's compositions express a wide-range of musical and intellectual interests. He experiments with spatialization, improvisative strategies, serialized rhythmic cycles, and symmetrical pitch construction. He often finds inspiration in the work and ideas of visual artists such as Robert Smithson, Sol Lewitt, and Sigmar Polke. McIntyre's on-going Smithson Project currently includes a series of multi-channel sound works, trombone and piano music for the film Monuments, a large ensemble work for members of Ne(x)tworks and JACK Quartet (premiered at The Kitchen, Dec. '11), and will premiere a solo trombone and electronics piece in October '12. Sol Lewitt's early 70's multiple media work Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes is at the core of McIntyre's stuplimity series, a set of works for various trombone ensembles (solo with laptop, quintet+, and the 7X7 septet). He has used conventional, instructional, and graphic notation systems to achieve these conceptual ends, frequently employing a combination within a single piece. The work invests a great deal in the creativity and musicianship of its players; each performance is a unique iteration of the original material.
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He has contributed to the repertoire of TILT Brass, Ne(x)tworks, 7X7, Flexible Orchestra, and B3+ brass trio. Compositional performance highlights include the recent world premiere of The Shape of Time from Smithson Project at The Kitchen, the collaborative folio score stuplimity no.2 (music for Sundown) created for 7x7 and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma (supported by American Music Center's Live Music For Dance program) which occured both in and outside ISSUE Project Room's former Gowanus Canal location, and the combined forces of TILT and Lotet (a McIntyre band project) premiering Metaxis at Roulette in December '06, commissioned by Roulette and Jerome Foundation. Metaxis, a collection of cell-based notated material, has been heard in subsequent iterations including Metaxis 2 for TILT SIXtet, and Metaxis [Wave], a site-specific version presented at Free103point9's Wave Farm. McIntyre's multi-channel sound work was featured during the 2008 (silOM, co-presented with Diapason Gallery) and 2010 (Alogon & Kalimpong Khor from Smithson Project) MATA Festivals. Ne(x)tworks premiered the critically acclaimed Raster for quintet, piano and string quartet, during the 2009 MATA Festival. In Nov. '09, TILT Creative Brass Band premiered McIntyre's Foliation (for Suzanne) at Roullette. Foliation was released on TILT Brass' debut release To TILT: Original Music for TILT Brass Vol. 1 in April '11.
Beyond performing and creating music, McIntyre is active as a curator, concert producer, and Board member. From 2007 to 2010 he was Artistic Director of MATA, a non-profit organization that commissions and presents the work of young composers. During his tenure, McIntyre conceived and launched the successful concert series Interval (co-presented with Issue Project Room) with friend and colleague Missy Mazzoli, a program that "has kept the franchise in view and virtually doubled the amount of music presented under MATA’s imprimatur" (NY Times, Nov. 08). He also curated and co-produced (with Mazzoli) three of MATA's annual Festival's, featuring groups such as Argento Chamber Ensemble, Calder Quartet, So Percussion, NOW Ensemble, Either/Or, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. As curator for Ne(x)tworks from 2006 to 2009, he was responsible for programming concerts for the group, including three annual multi-event residencies (IPR '06, The Stone '07, CAM '08). He served as Associate Music Curator at The Kitchen, acting as Artistic Director of the ten-piece experimental chamber orchestra Kitchen House Blend, and lead curator of live events during New Sound, New York Festival (April '04). Independent curatorial projects include Composing With Patterns: Music at Mid-Century heard in the Rotunda at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (July '12), programming the month of June 2007 at John Zorn's East Village venue The Stone, which featured the festival Trombonophilia and TILT Brass Band's mini-festival ALL TILT, and multi-event projects at The Kitchen including Let's Go Swimming: A Tribute to Arthur Russell (May '08) and A Power Stronger Than Itself: A Celebration of the AACM (Oct '08). McIntyre serves on the Board of Directors for MATA Festival and Tri-Centric Foundation. Show less
