About
Photo by moe penders
Ess Whiteley is a music maker & composer working primarily with electronics and transmedia, whose diverse and fluid practice takes the form of performances, installations, recordings and scores. Their work engages with the post-internet, eco-futurism, cyborgian sound worlds and deep listening to the existential impacts of technology on modern life.
Ess seeks to unearth felt yet unarticulated currents of emotionality and experience through the unseen, ephemeral and somatic nature of the sonic. They are are interested in vibrational world-building and sound’s capacity to mutate the real by creating new ways of experiencing time, memory and futurity.
Winner of the Riot Ensemble Call for Scores, MA/IN Matera Intermedia Festival Honourable Mention and Resident Composer at the Mizzou International Composers Festival, Ess’s work has been commissioned by ensembles such as Alarm Will Sound and presented at MATA (New York, USA), Int-Act (Bangkok, TH), MANTIS (Manchester, UK), Dublin Music Current (Dublin, IE), WOCMAT (Hsinchu, TW), Centro Ricerche Musicali (Rome, IT), SMC (Graz, AT), Vox Electronica (Lviv, UA), ICMC (Boston, USA), Echofluxx (Prague, CZ), TIER (Berlin, DE), Nuova Consonanza (Rome, IT) amongst many others. They have toured in Europe, the UK, and North America multiple times, and have had work featured on publications like Pitchfork, The Wire, New Music Handbook, Relevant Tones and others. Ess’s music has been released on labels like Not Not Fun, 99Chants, and Topshelf Records, and their sound design and film scoring work has been licensed with clients like the New York City Ballet, Pierre Cardin, ØTHERS and many more.
Ess’s work, creative practice, and Deep Listening practice is heavily informed by the two years they spent studying Buddhism and practicing meditation intensively while living in a Zen Buddhist Monastery.
They received a BM in Composition and World Religions from McGill University, and are currently a PhD Candidate at the University of California-San Diego where they also received a fully-funded Master of Arts. Their mentors have included Melissa Hui, Marcos Balter, Roger Reynolds, Michelle Lou and King Britt.
