Todd Reynolds

Todd Reynolds is one of the unique voices to have come out of the Bang on a Can, post-minimal scene. Composer, chamber musician, violinist, and improviser, he is an uptown, midtown, and downtown musician whose collaborative list reads like a who’s who of experimental music. Perhaps best known for his work in the foundational era of the string group ETHEL, as a chamber musician he also spent time in the Steve Reich Ensemble, the Silk Road Project, and Bang on a Can, among other ensembles, which contributed to his unique voice as a performer and composer.

Today his work rises out of both the acoustic and electronic worlds as he continues his work on behalf of composers, creating ensembles, conducting, producing, playing, and recording. Sometimes touring with his own music as a solo act opening for bands like The Books, with whom he has also collaborated, he might also be found performing new work and even classics of the twentieth century with a chamber music group of his own design. He has collaborated with Meredith Monk, bringing together a string quartet for her touring work Songs of Ascension for BAM’s Next Wave festival. In production and performance, Reynolds uses a laptop as a constant second instrument, employing commercially available software (Ableton Live), along with his traditional violin, creating a hybrid “digital fiddle” to realize his and others’ compositions in real time. His own performance format, Still Life with Microphone, a site-specific piece of concert laptop-driven theater, tours as a duo residency with video artist Luke DuBois. Reynolds’s teaching residencies at universities across the nation include creativity conversations, nontraditional master classes, composer forums, and software performance integration.