Virgil Moorefield

Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1956, Virgil Moorefield is a composer and multimedia artist, who explores intermedia, contemporary classical, and experimental works. He began drumming at the age of five and by age seventeen Moorefield had performed multiple times as a drummer-composer in Zürich, where he was also attending the American School. Moving to the East Village in New York City in 1979, Moorefield established his career as a self-taught composer. In the 1980s’ Moorefield worked with rock bands such as Damage, K-Martians, and Swans, focusing on experimental rock and making his first recording, Transformations, that was released in 1983. Moorefield simultaneously also began working with with the Glenn Branca Ensemble, touring and recording together until 2008. In 1994, the group premiered Symphonies No. 8 and No. 10 at The Kitchen, where Moorefield was in charge of drums and drum arrangements. A year prior his performance with Glenn Branca Ensemble, Moorefield and his nine-member group presented avant-rock compositions at The Kitchen’s 1993 Gruppen: Chamber Music for the 21st Century. Later in 1996, Moorefield performed with Emily XYZ at the first performance of the TEXTY THE CLOWN series, which was curated by XYZ and Edwin Torres and presented here at The Kitchen. Combining compositional and improvisational processes, Moorefield coined the term “comprovisation” to describe his works during the mid 1990s. After receiving a M.F.A in 1998 and a Ph.D. in 2001 in composition from Princeton University, Moorefield expanded his dissertation, The Producer As Composer, to a hardcover (2005) and paperback (2010) published by MIT Press. Since the early 2000s, Moorefield has focused on writing large-scale compositions, performing live acoustic, electronic processing of acoustic signals, and live visual music such as No Business As Usual/Five Ideas About the Relation of Sight and Sound (2013). For more information, please visit: http://www.virgilmoorefield.com/index.html