biography

jim altieri listening to a crackling volcanic rock

"programming superwiz" - Kyle Gann, newmusicbox.org

"violinist" - Steve Smith, New York Times

Jim Altieri loves listening. Through his music and software, he tries to share this love with other listeners. Based in New York City, Jim is an active composer and violinist. His own music often uses the harmonies and rhythms of the harmonic series and explores the relationship between attention and awareness.

In addition to solo work, Jim has two main bands with which he regularly performs:

Glissando bin Laden and his Musichideen combines just intonation, polyrhythmic patterns, Hindustani and Scandanavian music in a pungent blend of synthesized, live-processed, and fiddled sound. GbL's album is available by download at the Carrier Records website.
Glissando bin Laden is: Jim Altieri (violin), Caroline Malloneé (violin), Alexander Ness (laptop, vocals), Sam Pluta (laptop). Meighan Stoops played bass clarinet with GbL for a glorious year.

Tatters and Rags is a skronky, droney, alt-country band. T&R self-released a 7" single record featuring the single Heartache. The full album is due to be released in late 2010.

In NYC, Jim also has collaborated and played with many other excellent composers and bands, including Pearl and the Beard, Wet Ink Ensemble, Tristan Perich, Tom Swafford's String Power, Rocky Heron, Duane Pitre, Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves, Katie Young, and Corey Dargel.

For several summers, Jim taught computer musicianship, acoustics, and composition at the Walden School, a program for middle school and high school aged composers.

Jim is enjoying his home state of New York after several years of living and composing all over the country (and globe):

In Fairbanks, Alaska, Jim worked for a year and a half with composer John Luther Adams on two major installations, The Place Where You Go to Listen, and Veils and Vesper. You can read more about these (and other) collaborative projects on the projects page.

In Thailand, Jim travelled, learned the language, tried to learn a bit about the traditional musics, and ate a lot of really strange food.

In Portland, Oregon, Jim was extremely active in the free music community. He co-founded the 411 collective, which maintained a community center and performance venue for local and visiting improvisors. He played violin and computer with David Rafn, Joel Taylor, and the D. Yellow Swans. He played amplified bicycle with the Portland Bicycle Ensemble. He played violin, computer, and sometimes even danced with Linda Austin at Performance Works NorthWest. At the end of his time in Portland, Jim toured the west coast from Bellingham to Valencia with saxophonist and circuit-bender Bryan Eubanks and percussionist Leif Sundstrom.

Jim got his degrees in music technology, composition, and geology from Oberlin Conservatory and College. There he studied composition with John Luther Adams, Pauline Oliveros, and Tom Lopez. While living in Oberlin, Jim was a founding member of two musical groups: les moutons, with Corey Dargel, Yvan Greenberg, kt shorb, and Bill Stevens, and the laptop quartet geek doubt, with Peter Blasser, Joshua McFadden, and Mike Rosenthal. Also while at Oberlin, his piece for vocalizing pianist, thirty-two feet per second per second was selected for recording and inclusion on Aural Capacity, a conservatory-produced CD of student works, and he released tweeg:phonic, a recording of a solo computer improvisation.

If you're interested, you can look at Jim's CV (PDF, 64 KB).

Jim can be reached at jim@tweeg.net.

Selected Discography: