Act
Jill Fraser
Jill Fraser is a composer and electronic music pioneer whose career encompasses over 40 years of work making music for films, commercials, games and, in the wild, as quote-unquote, 'entertainment.' Her ever-evolving curiosity about music as both a science and an aesthetic/spiritual force to be reckoned with is showcased on her forthcoming album, Earthly Pleasures, a resetting of American revival-style hymns of the late 19th/early 20th century. Exploring the music as language and code via arrangements with early Serge systems and newer modules like the Ableton Push 3, Jill is not simply making expressive and personal music. While her new work speculates upon death and what comes after it, it also considers how the things we derive meaning from today will look and sound like when encountered by the diverse and unknowable seekers and technologies of the future. Jill set the controls for a path leading in this direction long ago. She was mentored by Morton Subotnick, studied with Mel Powell and Earle Brown at CalArts and attended master classes with, among others, John Cage and Lou Harrison. As these encounters interacted with her own impulses, she could only emerge as an open-eared and expansive maker of music! Her work at Serge Modular in Hollywood elevated her craft to a visionary level as well. In the 1980s, she took her modular synths into the Hollywood studios to score films, heralding a new approach to the genre, with composing credits including Personal Best, Cruising (both in collaboration with composer Jack Nitzsche), and Hardcore (directed by Paul Schrader). Jill was part of the vibrant Los Angeles punk and spoken word scene in the 80s as well, touring with singer Buffy Sainte Marie and performance artist Ivan E. Roth. Playing modular synthesizer, she opened for acts like The Minutemen and Henry Rollins, and released the CD Alphabetical Disorders with Ivan in 1988 on the short-lived electronic label Periodic Music.Browse all performers