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), co-composer and builder of interactive sound installations and digital instruments.
FRASCH’s work explores notions of fragility and stillness through the creation of complex timbres, the usage of experimental notation systems, and unstable design in electronics. By customizing performance set-ups to communicate specific artistic ideas, Frasch creates sensitive sonic works that highlight fragility and emphasize micro-activity. 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.
Currently she is exploring the potential of acoustic objects as physical filters in a collaborative installation project with Rebecca Lane using resonating spheres. As a soloist she is performing a series of works using self-made DIY kinetic objects that she manipulates live, enhancing them with real-time electronics, blended with synthesizers to create textural polyphonic composition. As a composer she is designing a series of works for chamber ensembles that extends this work; as well as composing works for acoustic instruments that uses fragile performance techniques to create complex quivering soundscapes. As a member of the electroacoustic trio, Concrete Sun, she is co-creating a series of sonic works to draw awareness to the work of bio-acousticians in Norway that are studying the impact of climate change on microorganisms in the Trondheim fjord.
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