Biography

Judy Dunaway is a composer, improvisor and conceptual artist who is primarily known for her sound works for latex balloons. Since 1990 Judy Dunaway has composed over thirty works for balloons as instruments and has also made this her main instrument for improvisation.

Judy Dunaway has presented her compositions and improvisations for balloons throughout North America and Europe at many venues and festivals including Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, REDCAT, the SoHo Arts Festival, the Alternative Museum, the Knitting Factory, Performance Space 122, Roulette, Experimental Intermedia, Soundlab, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bang on a Can Festival, the Guelph Jazz Festival, Podewil and ZKM. She has performed as a balloon player in compositions by John Zorn and Roscoe Mitchell, and in improvisations and/or collaborations with the FLUX Quartet, performance artist Annie Sprinkle, video artist Zev Robinson, visual artists Nancy Davidson and Ken Butler, percussionists John Hollenbeck and Matt Moran, the Illuminati big band, DJ Singe, and numerous others. Her compositions for balloons include electronic and multi-media works, sound installations, and works that incorporate more traditional instrumentation such as string quartet, chorus and Japanese koto.

Awards include a recording grant from the Aaron Copland Fund of the American Music Center, a commission from the American Composers Forum's Composers Commissioning Fund, an artist/researcher-in-residency at Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie, a recording residency at Harvestworks/Studio Pass, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer and the Kalliste Foundation. Ms. Dunaway has published two articles in Musicworks magazine about her work with balloons: A History of the Balloon as a Sound Producer in Experimental Music (Fall 2001), and, Orchestration and Playing Techniques for Balloons as Sound Producers (Spring 2002).

Dunaway has a Ph.D. in Music Composition from State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied with analog electronic music composer Daria Semegen and multi-media artist Christa Erickson, and a M.A. in Experimental Music from Wesleyan University (Connecticut) where she studied with composer Alvin Lucier. She also holds a B.S. in Music Education from Hunter College (New York City). In academic year 2004-2005 she was full-time Visiting Faculty in Sound at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer in the Art History Department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

For the past few years, Dunaway has been working in the area of transmission and telematic art under a variety of pseudonyms. Her Dada Wurm project features transmission art exploiting and critiquing various social media sites, as well as other aspects of streaming, compression (both data and audio) and audio downloading. In August 2010 she coordinated The Phone Improv Show featuring 16 phoned-in live-streamed programs of improvisational music as part of the 30th annual Improvisor Festival. Under her own name, from 2006-2010 she maintained and coordinated a not-for-profit educational webcast (2006-2008) and online audio library (2008-2010) for audio art and activism concerning the rights of sex workers called Sex Workers' Internet Radio Lounge/Library.

Other works by Ms. Dunaway include Affirmative Action, a political multi-media piece utilizing sensor-activated projections as visual music, commissioned by percussionist Russell Greenberg; Sensation, a composition for audience presented at the Mixed Messages Festival where it was conducted by Jackie 60 Award-winner Baby Dee; Duo for Radio Stations, simulcast on WFMU (New Jersey) and WKCR (New York); and the score for Diane Torr's performance art piece Crossing the River Styx, the "high decibel music" that instigated the closing of the Franklin Furnace performance space in 1990.

From 1989-1995 she performed on guitar and vocals with her duo Judy Dunaway and the Evan Gallagher Little Band, which toured throughout the U.S. and Europe. She wrote over 30 songs for this duo, most of which were recorded and released on the CDs "Judy Dunaway" (Lost, 1990) and "Judy Dunaway and the Evan Gallagher Little Band" (AMF/Lilly Myrtle, 1993).

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