Sarah Weaver : Composer

Sarah Weaver, Ph.D. is a New York-based contemporary composer, conductor, technologist, educator, researcher, and administrator working internationally as a specialist in ensemble composition and network arts. Her network composition system innovates contemplative concepts on synchrony, synthesis, transmission, and interconnection for artistic and social purpose. Weaver is Director of the Sarah Weaver Ensemble, Director of NowNet Arts, Editor of the Journal of Network Music and Arts (JONMA), and teaches network arts at New York University.

Weaver has developed her network composition system over the past twenty-five years of professional music work and over seventeen years as an innovator in network arts advancing live performance via the internet by musicians and artists in different geographic locations. The network arts technological system utilizes JackTrip audio together with specialized audio and video technology for low-latency, multichannel, performance-quality experience. Her composition system is conceived for both localized and network settings as an integrated concept of network within the music for elements of time, pitch, harmony, timbre, instrumentation, and form. The system includes staff notation, graphic notation, text notation, structured improvisation, and gestures. The work has synthesized across more than sixty pieces she has written and continues to expand.

Weaver has composed works for soloists, chamber groups, and large ensembles since 1998. Weaver began working in network arts in 2006 through Pauline Oliveros and Chris Chafe, expanding her large ensemble work into the network setting, including her gestural language that builds on the Soundpainting system of Walter Thompson. The projects grew into a scene of many collaborations in New York and internationally including close collaboration with Mark Dresser. The core of pioneering performers/improvisers in her pieces and influential in the developments include Ray Anderson, Jane Ira Bloom, Samir Chatterjee, Yoon Sun Choi, Gerald Cleaver, Robert Dick, Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Min Xiao-Fen, Julie Ferrara, Gerry Hemingway, Oliver Lake, Denman Maroney, Ned Rothenberg, Ursel Schlicht, David Taylor, Matthias Zielger, and James Zollar. In recent years she has also worked with video artists through Experimental Intermedia in NYC/Ghent and Harvestworks including Katherine Liberovskaya, Beth Warshafsky, and Kit Fitzgerald, along with an international array of audiovisual artists and technologists in lab settings for network arts developments, including the PGJTT toolkit by Mike O’Connor. Weaver’s education includes a musical upbringing in the Chicago area in piano and playing in ensembles as a trombonist, certifications in Deep Listening and Soundpainting, Bachelor of Music with Education Certificate from University of Michigan, Master of Music in Music Technology from New York University, and Ph.D. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University, synthesizing with her career to form her network composition system.

Weaver’s recent works include sets of pieces in Synchrony Series (2011-2019), Synthesis Series (2020-2022), and new pieces for Transmission Series (2023-). Her works have been performed at contemporary venues throughout New York including Austrian Cultural Forum of New York, Experimental Intermedia, Harvestworks, Iridium Jazz Club, Roulette, The Stone, Symphony Space, United Nations Headquarters in New York, and Washington Square Park, internationally at a wide spectrum of sites, and online in the NowNet Arts Virtual Venue.

Weaver has been a contemporary conductor for twenty-five years. Weaver conducts all of her large ensemble compositions and has conducted compositions of collaborators especially in network arts. Originally trained in classical and jazz music conducting, her early conducting teachers included William Jastrow, John Stanley Ross, James Tapia, H. Robert Reynolds, and workshops with conductors such as Marin Alsop, Larry Rachleff, and Frederick Fennell. Professionally Weaver pursued the Soundpainting language of Walter Thompson as his associate and for her own works. Weaver then continued on into her current form of conducting that integrates classical and jazz music conducting, Soundpainting, original gestures for network arts settings, and original gestures for her compositions. Weaver is also involved with further research in technology-mediated conducting for future applications.

Recordings and publications involving Weaver’s works include “Synthesis Series: Music of Sarah Weaver and Collaborations (2020-2022)” recording (SyncSource Label) and research paper for Journal of Network Music and Arts, “Synchrony: Music of Sarah Weaver and Collaborations (2011-2019)” recording (SyncSource Label) and research paper for Journal of Network Music and Arts, “Reality Axis” solo works for Gerry Hemingway (SyncSource Label), “Source” with the SLM Ensemble (SyncSource Label), “Universal Synchrony Music, Volume 1” in the DVD “Virtual Tour: A Reduced-Carbon Footprint Concert Series” (pfMENTUM Label), “Deep Tones for Peace” (Kadima Label), 2011 and 2015 Compendiums: Music as a Global Resource: Solutions for Social and Economic Issues, “Telematic Music: Six Perspectives” research paper by Oliveros, Weaver, Dresser, Pitcher, Braasch, and Chafe, for Leonardo Music Journal, and ongoing Editorials for Journal of Network Music and Arts (2019-present).

As an educator, Weaver teaches network arts courses at New York University and at The New School College of Performing Arts. She has taught and presented at many universities in-person and via the internet including Carleton University Ottawa, Carnegie Mellon University, Concordia University, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), LaSalle School of Contemporary Music Singapore, National University of Singapore, New York University (New York, Abu Dhabi, Florence), New Zealand School of Music, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Queens University Belfast, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Royal College of Music London, Silpakorn University Bangkok, Sivas Cumhuriyet University Turkey, Stanford University, Stony Brook University, Trossingen University of Music Germany, University of California San Diego, University College Cork Ireland, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, York University Toronto, and Zurich University of the Arts. She has been a Visiting Researcher at Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium. Weaver teaches private lessons in New York and online.

Weaver has received grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants, City Artist Corp, Composers Now, Harvestworks Workspace, and Ph.D. Works Professional Development Award for Inclusion and Equity at Stony Brook University. Weaver is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), College Music Society, and the New York Botanical Garden.