About Me
André Cormier’s work has been presented in Canada, the USA, Europe and New Zealand in a variety of venues from seedy punk clubs in downtown LA to graceful churches in Montréal; from galleries across Canada to the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. He has written for solo musicians, small and large chamber ensembles and orchestra, as well as for opera, dance and collaborative work with visual artists and his works have been commissioned and premiered by artists in Canada, the USA and Europe. In 2003 he co-founded the artist collective OXO in Brooklyn, NY, and in 2004 he founded Ensemble Ordinature. As artistic director of Ensemble Ordinature, he oversaw their debut recording of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, which is featured on ubu.com and has been favourably reviewed in the UK new music magazine The Wire. Along with violist Mieka Kohut and artist Donna Kelly, Cormier co-founded CO•LAB, an ongoing multi-disciplinary collaborative project. His work features and explores chaos and gestalt theories as well as extended microtunings, other features include variable time structures and fluid interpretive notations. Cormier is an Acadian, originally from Moncton NB, and has lived on the west coast since the early nineties.His piece Piling Sand–Piling Stone II is featured for the April 2008 inaugural performance at Listen/Space (listenspacenyc.com), a new venue dedicated to new and experimental music in Brooklyn, NY. He has received assistance from The Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council as well as project assistance from the Vancouver Adapted Music Society. In 1997 he received the Murray Adaskin Prize in Composition.Ensembles that have presented Cormier’s work include Suna no onna (Can/US), Vancouver Miniaturist Ensemble (Can), Aventa (Can), Ctrl+Alt+Repeat (USA), Quatuor Bozzini (Can), Audiamour (Germany/Greece), Motion Ensemble (Can) Lost Dog New Musik (NY), Guthrie/Streb (US/Can), OXO (NY), New Century Players (USA), Redshift (Can), BEAMS Electroacoustic Ensemble (Can), 60x60 Project (USA), New Century Players (USA). Soloists that have presented Cormier’s work include cellist Jessica Catron, harpist Susan Allen, violinist Johnny Chang, and violist Mieka Kohut. Cormier's work has been presented on CBC (Can), Radio New Zealand (NZ), KZSU (LA), WLUW (Chicago), Wandelweiser web radio (Germany) and was included on the 2007 Vox Novus release of the 60x60 Project.André received composition degrees from the University of Victoria (B.Mus. 1999) and from the California Institute for the Arts (MFA 2002). Primary teachers are Christopher Butterfield, John Celona and James Tenney. He has also worked closly with Michael Pisaro, Stephen ’Lucky’ Mosko, Morton Subotnick, David Rosenboom and Michael Longton.
