Nicholas Frances Chase

Nicholas Frances Chase

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Nicholas Francis Chase

Los Angeles based composer Nicholas Frances Chase holds an MFA in Composition -- New Media & Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts from whom he is one of the first recipients of the President's Distinguished Alumnus Award for Recent Alumni (Fall 2000). He has studied under Stephen L. Mosko, Bunita Marcus, Morton Subotnick, David Rosenboom, Anne LeBaron and Mary Jane Leach among others. In 1999 Mr. Chase studied Arabic Classical Music with Ziad Buni, director of the Conservatory of Arabic Classical Music--Aleppo, in Syria. His small ensemble chamber works have been performed by the New Century Players, the California E.A.R. Unit, New Zealand's 175 East, and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony from whom he received a joint award from the Symphony and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art for the Andy Warhol-inspired work tw!TcH. Mr. Chase’s solo works have been performed extensively by first violinist of New York’s Ensemble Sospeso, Mark Menzies, and by award winning harpist, Anne Bassand among others. His electronic ensemble works have been performed as part of the Center for Electronic Art, Information and Technology (CEAIT) Festivals of 1999 and 2000 and a concert of his electro-acoustic composition was featured in Spring 2003 as part of Stanford’s Music from the Edge contemporary music festival at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Notable works include e1>3ktr=A, an inter-media opera based on Sophocles' "Electra", the performance and recording of which he produced and performed in the Spring of 2000, Walk Careful and Underneath My Skin, both compositions for dance, performed in Los Angeles in 1998 and at Sarah Lawrence College in the Winter of 2002, collaboration with the Noisy Clothes Project featuring the compositions of Mr. Chase and of Brazilian composer Ana Fridman, founding member of the electronic ¿? (Ensemble Qué?) with Bay Area composer Sean Rooney, as well as CDs of original electronic and improvisational compositions released on Secession Recordings and Bright Green Records. Most recently, the Long Beach Opera premiered Mr. Chase’s opera, Twenty-Two based on text by Oregon-based writer Ann Haroun. Also a visual designer, Mr. Chase has worked in the media of CD ROM, digital art, photography and painting. Mr. Chase currently holds the position of Administrator to the Center for Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts and is Assistant Director of Wizard Music and also teaches composition privately.

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