Tim Root's Handy Metal Mart

Tim Root is a composer, performer and improviser based in Seattle, Washington. His work is unabashedly experimental and a focused attempt to move music from behind the stands and towards theatre. His compositions combine highly detailed music for instrumentalists using notational techniques largely of his own invention, improvisation and theatrical instructions that push at the boundaries of how music is made. His works explore new methods by which art can be infused with meaning through the use of chance compositional procedures, virtuosic open form scores and a philosophy that stresses the simultaneous presentation of multiple works in a wide variety of mediums. The result is a whole that places the performers in new and challenging physical, theatrical and musical contexts. His aims are to engage audiences, musicians and the cross-discipline collaborators that are so crucial to his work in a constant search for art.
In 1985 he was a founding member of San Diego's Sledgehammer Theatre, a relationship that continues to the present with the Sledgehammer's recent commissioning of A/wake (2005), Chiang Kai Chek (2006) and Beckett3 (2007) for which he received generous support from Meet the Composer Inc. for a series of lectures and workshop demonstrations surrounding the San Diego premier. This production also featured Mr. Root’s “Speaker Puppets” – large moving clusters and pendulums of speaker elements used to distribute the recorded score throughout the venue. Excerpts from his scores “Stitches (for ensemble)” and “Shoes-UI-Teeth (for percussion)” from Beckett3 will receive live performances at the Seattle Composer Salon in 2007. He leads ensemble performances of his work under the moniker “Tim Root’s Handy Metal Mart.”
Mr. Root is currently at work on “S (a large book of music for Soloists, alone or together),” which combines instrumental notation with text, theatrical activities, and other visual elements into hybrid performances. He is also at work on “Music for Impossible Instruments,” a suite of imaginary performances created through collaboration between musicians and sound designers, Foley artists, and other purveyors of the sonically impossible. Partial funding for this work has been provided by Jack Straw Productions through their Artist Assistance program.
He holds a BA in Music Composition from UC San Diego where he studied with Bob Erickson, John Silber and Jimmy Cheatham, and an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied with Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran and Chris Brown.
A list of key works and performers includes: Stitches for Ensemble, Tom Swafford, Chris Stover, Eric Barber, Tom Baker, Lori Goldston, Beth Fleenor, Greg Sinibaldi, Jesse Canterbury, Brian Cobb, Scott Paulson. Shoes-UI-Teeth, Nathan Hubbard, percussion, S for Soloists, Greg Campbell, Travis Metcalf, Bill Horist, Nathan Hubbard, Gabriel Sundy and others in multiple performances... Aria (Waving his hands..The only Chinese word he knew), Markee Rambo-Hood, Mezzo Soprano. The Perfect Gentleman, Nick Carvajal, Bill Horist & Travis Metcalf, prepared guitar in multiple performances. Whale Song, Markee Rambo-Hood, Tim Root, vocalists & Nick Carvajal and Travis Metcalf, prepared guitar in multiple performances. Lux Profana, the lighting technicians and amplified grid of Sledgehammer Theatre. Light, Tim Root, vocalist. Lullaby, La Jolla Country Day School Chorus. E-R-M-PT-Loops for Ensemble, multiple performances. Lousse, Robin Goldstein, Flute. I Soon Shall be Quite Dead, Tom Dambly, Trumpet and Electronics. FVOX, Amy X. Neuburg, Soprano: Scott for household machines, Tim Root, Richard Michos, Carl Grunewald, Bryan Bunyan.