Christopher McIntyre leads a multi-faceted career in the contemporary arts as a composer, solo and ensemble performer, and curator/producer. The diversity of his activities led Time Out New York to note "...with every passing week, trombonist-composer Chris McIntyre becomes more central to the new-music experience in New York." (Nov. '09) He performs on trombone and Nord synthesizer in a variety of settings, ranging from fully notated concert works to open improvisations. Current projects include solo work, leading TILT Brass (Creative Brass Band and SIXtet), 7X7 Trombone Band, and electro-improv group LOTET, and collaborative efforts including the creative music ensemble Ne(x)tworks. McIntyre's trombone skills have been utilized in groups such as SEM Ensemble, Flexible Orchestra, The Knights, and the Darmstadt series' acclaimed performance of Terry Riley's In C, and in composer-led projects of Zeena Parkins, David First, Michael Schumacher, Elliott Sharp, Charles Waters, Jonathan Bepler (w/ Matthew Barney), and Anthony Coleman. Recordings of his work can be heard on New World, Tzadik, and Mode Records, and on Archive.org.
McIntyre's compositions express a wide-range of musical and intellectual interests. In his composing, he has experimented with conceptual elements such as spatialization, recontextualized notated material, and improvisative strategy, along with ideas of scale, symmetrical pitch constructions, and self-similarity. The aesthetics of visual artists such as Sigmar Polke and Sol Lewitt have played an important role in creating several works. Polke's use of juxtaposition and imperfect repetition heavily influenced the Ne(x)tworks piece's Sigmar [unknown source] and Raster for quintet. The stuplimity series for various trombone ensembles (solo with laptop, quintet+, and the 7X7 septet) derives concepts directly from LeWitt's early 70's multiple media work Variations on Incomplete Open Cubes, including the presentation of serialized material in disparate formats and media. He experiments with both conventional, instructional, and graphic notation systems to achieve these conceptual ends, frequently employing a combination within a single piece. The work invests a great deal in the creativity and musicianship of its players; each performance is a unique iteration of the original material.
He has contributed to the repertoire of Lotet, TILT, Ne(x)tworks, 7X7, Flexible Orchestra, and B3+ brass trio. Performance highlights include presenting the collaborative folio score stuplimity no.2 (music for Sundown) created for 7x7 and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma (supported by American Music Center's Live Music For Dance program) both inside and out at ISSUE Project Room's Gowanus Canal location, and the combined forces of TILT and Lotet premiering Metaxis at Roulette in December '06, commissioned by Roulette and Jerome Foundation. Metaxis, a collection of cell-based notated material, has been heard in subsequent iterations including Metaxis 2 for TILT SIXtet, and Metaxis [Wave], a site-specific version presented at Free103point9's Wave Farm. McIntyre's multi-channel sound work was featured during the 2008 (silOM, co-presented with Diapason Gallery) and 2010 (Monuments (Crystial)) MATA Festivals. Ne(x)tworks premiered the critically acclaimed Raster for quintet, piano and string quartet, during the 2009 MATA Festival. In Nov. '09, TILT Creative Brass Band premiered McIntyre's Foliation (for Suzanne) at Roullette, a work to be released on TILT's upcoming CD/vinyl release To TILT: Original Music for TILT Brass Vol. 1 in Dec. '10.
Beyond performing and creating music, McIntyre is active as a curator and concert producer. From 2007 to 2010 he was Artistic Director of MATA, a non-profit organization that commissions and presents the work of young composers. As AD, McIntyre conceived and launched the successful concert series Interval (co-presented with Issue Project Room), a program that "has kept the franchise in view and virtually doubled the amount of music presented under MATA’s imprimatur" (NY Times, Nov. 08). McIntyre curated and co-produced (with colleague Executive Director Missy Mazzoli) three of MATA's annual Festival's, featuring groups such as Argento, Calder Quartet, So Percussion, NOW Ensemble, Either/Or, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. As curator for Ne(x)tworks from 2006 to 2009, he was responsible for programming concerts for the group, including three annual multi-event residencies (IPR '06, The Stone '07, CAM '08). He served as Associate Music Curator at The Kitchen, acting as Artistic Director of the ten-piece experimental chamber orchestra Kitchen House Blend, and lead curator of live events during New Sound, New York Festival (April '04). Independent curatorial projects include programming the month of June 2007 at John Zorn's East Village venue The Stone, which featured the festival Trombonophilia and TILT Brass Band's mini-festival ALL TILT, and multi-event projects at The Kitchen including Let's Go Swimming: A Tribute to Arthur Russell (May '08) and A Power Stronger Than Itself: A Celebration of the AACM (Oct '08).
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