Evelyn Ficarra is a composer and sound artist. Her work finds expression across a range of forms including music theatre, multi media, installation, dance, film and the concert hall. Throughout her career she has enjoyed collaborative work with choreographers, directors, filmmakers, and visual artists. Her musical ideas are often co-mingled with, or germinated from, extra-musical materials (words, images, sounds) which inform the development and shape of the music and leave their traces in it. In that sense, all her work is interdisciplinary at its core. In another sense, she is thoroughly single minded, hearing all sounds as music, understanding all time based structures (e.g. in film, dance, theatre) as forms of music, looking at all objects as potential sound sources for music.
Click here to view or download a list of her music and writings.
Current preoccupations include:
- audio time-lapse
- robot opera (embodiment, vocality, performance)
- sound objects in different contexts including installation and live improvisation
A dual citizen (UK/USA), Evelyn Ficarra studied composition at the University of Sussex in the U.K. and the University of California, Berkeley. She has several years’ experience as a freelance composer, teacher and sound editor. Her work has received support from the Arts Council of England, the London Arts Board, the Sonic Arts Network, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, the Hinrichsen Foundation, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Meet the Composer and Poems on the Underground. Her music has been heard in concert halls, theaters, music festivals, film festivals, on television and in radio broadcasts in the UK, Europe, the Americas, Australia and the Far East. Her solo CD Frantic Mid-Atlantic is available on the Sargasso Label www.sargasso.com.
See the NEWS page for recent and upcoming projects.
Watch this short documentary about the Robot Opera project at the University of Sussex, hosted by the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre and the Sussex Humanities Lab.
Previous iterations of the robot opera research project: Robot Opera, What’s Next at the Sussex Humanities Lab in June 2019, featuring a workshop performance of Here, Kittykitty, a short opera for a Pepper Robot, a human singer, a human cellist, a robot cello and a robot cat, and O, One, a five-minute opera for two Nao Robots and cello, made in collaboration with Dr. Ron Chrisley at the University of Sussex, premiered at the Robot Opera Mini Symposium at the University of Sussex in June 2017.
Ongoing collaborations include Dissonant Futures (amplified prepared piano, live video and live electronic sound) with pianist / composer Myra Melford and video artist Ian Winters; a process-based interdisciplinary improvisation group ACE led by performance artist Chris Evans; a laptop & found objects improvisation duo soeurs sonores with Berlin-based composer Heather Frasch; and a trio Concrete Sun with Heather Frasch and Myra Melford with whom she performed most recently at KM28 in Berlin (May 2022).
Evelyn has had residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Programme (2004, 2012) and at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic (2017 & 2018). At EMPAC she collaborated on a site-specific piece Listening Creates an Opening with Mary Armentrout Dance Theater, premiered 12th-15th September 2018, later revived for ODC in San Francisco in May, 2019.
Evelyn Ficarra is Professor of Interdisciplinary Composition (Music) at the University of Sussex.
Evelyn Ficarra Music and Writings