CHRISTINA CAMPANELLA is a composer, vocalist and sound artist who creates music and sound-based works across disciplines. Informed by her deep history as a performer in theater, film, and opera, Campanella’s “moody, driving music”, “hymn-like songs” (New York Times), and “ethereal voice” (BUST Magazine) are the mainspring of her work across disciplines. Fusing songwriting and music composition with aural design, Campanella weaves ambient textures and a dreamy avant-rock sensibility into cinematic soundscapes and deconstructed art songs.
She has created two large scale works for The Great Learning Orchestra (Stockholm) - an improvising orchestra that specializes in concert-installation and premiere performances of graphically notated scores. She is a recipient of Opera America’s Discovery Grant for Female Composers, 3 NYSCA Individual Artist Commissions in Film, Media and New Technologies, a performance grant from Café Royal Cultural Foundation, commissioning from the Swedish Cultural Council, HERE Arts Center and independent curators, funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Anti-Social Music, NY State Music Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New Music USA, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and individual patrons. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Harvestworks, HERE Arts Center, and Whitman College.
Selected works: THE VISITATION, an opera for a vanishing world (in-process), THE VISITATION, site-specific sound walk (Jackie Robinson Park), ALL THINGS FROM ZERO (concert-installation for The Great Learning Orchestra, Stockholm), FIND ME (12:1 sound installation, HERE), LIGHTHOUSE 40°N, 73°W (headphone installation, NY Electronic Art Festival), PARTS ARE EXTRA (experimental cinema, Fylkingen), BREATHE (sound installation, Museum at MIT), RED FLY BLUE BOTTLE (music-theater, EMPAC, Noorderzon, HERE) and TINDER (music-theater, EXIT Festival, HERE).
As a performer in downtown theater and independent film since 1997, Campanella has appeared throughout the U.S. and abroad in works created and/or directed by Richard Foreman, Phil Soltanoff, Theodora Skipitares, Jim Findlay, Mallory Catlett and many others. She has played organ/accordion/electronics and sung backing vocals with various NY bands, including Five Dollar Priest, Parker & Lily, Rebecca Moore, Black Watch, Ivan Julian, Andre Williams, The Negatones, Speedball Baby, The Oubliettes, Heavy Trash, and The Quarter After (with first cousins Rob and Dominc Campanella). She has sung works by composers Kitty Brazelton and Nick Brooke, and regularly performs the operas of composer/sound artist Joe Diebes.