Sxip Shirey

Early life

Shirey grew up in Athens, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio University, and having studied physics and folk guitar, he moved to New York in the late-1980s. He currently resides in Brooklyn.

Bands

Shirey started experimenting with found sound composition and extended instrument techniques when asked to compose music for Ohio University’s modern dance department. This eventually took him to New York City and he has been performing in venues ranging from underground clubs in Brooklyn to a TED, to Europe and to the Sydney Opera House.

A founding member of the band Luminescent Orchestrii in 2002, Shirey has released three albums with The Luminescent Orchestrii and one EP on Nonesuch Records as a collaboration between Luminescent Orchestrii and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Shirey is also a member of The Daredevil Opera Company.

Solo albums and scores

Shirey has released three solo albums, with the first in 2006.

About Statuesque, a 2009 short film by Neil Gaiman with a score by Shirey, Lily Percy of NPR wrote "The work stars Bill Nighy and is silent save for Shirey's haunting score — marked by an assortment of moody piano melodies, bells and chimes — which sets the tone for a dramatic take on a Mannequin-esque love story." It was featured in an 11 part series for Sky TV in the United Kingdom.

About his 2010 solo album Sonic New York, Huffington Post wrote that "the collection of 17 pieces range from chanted poetry to raw blues to ghostly choirs to folk songs to a postmodern dance track and more." NPR reviewed the song "In Awe Of The City Skyline" in August 2010, describing it as "wistful," explaining that it "captures a singer's unique, complicated romance with New York City." The review also praised the duet between Shirey and Aimee Curl. He has had two songs featured as NPR's Song of the Day.

About one of his live performances at the time, which often feature Shirey recruiting audience members to assist with instruments, Huffington Post wrote "every noise wrung out of a piece of cheap plastic or kazoo or run through his complicated amplification, stood on its own and had something authentic to say about sound and its resonance with the human nervous system. It was experimental, but it was confident and real - definitely not ironic."

Performances

Previous performance highlights include featured presenter at TED, support act for Dresden Dolls US tour, Ashley Capp's Big Ears Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia, Floyd Fest, Joe's Pub, The Knitting Factory and CBGB's in New York City.

He scored five silent films such as "A Trip to the Moon" by Georges Méliès in collaboration with The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.

Shirey has played exploding circus organ for the Daredevil Opera Company at the Sydney Opera House and the Kennedy Center, industrial flutes for acrobats at The New Victory Theater on Broadway, tamponophone with The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus at Bonnaroo, hillbilly music for gypsies in Transylvania.

In a band called Gentlemen & Assassins with another member of Dresden Dolls, Brian Viglione and Elyas Khan of Nervous Cabaret. They performed a show at Theater Dortmund with Sonic Youth and Dresden Dolls producer Martin Bisi

He is the host and producer of Sxip's Hour of Charm, a variety show of cabaret acts. Hour of Charm regularly occurs in New York City, usually at Joe's Pub, but has been taken on the road to the American Repertory Theatre, the Rothbury Music Festival and other venues. hirey also hosted and curated the multi-part Charm Sessions featuring live international music from NYC for Radio Scotland. Shirey has toured Ireland and Wales as a duo, "Sxip and Rhi" with Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Musicians, artists, and sound generators who have performed with Shirey include Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley, Reggie Watts, Corn Mo, Bora Yoon, Project Jenny, Project Jan, Elyas Khan, Brian Viglione, Curtis Eller, The Red Bastard, Una Mimnagh, Greg Walloch, Scotty The Blue Bunny, Jonathan Nosan, AJ Silver. Toured with Féloche. and Evelyn Evelyn for whom he provided an elaborate shadow puppet show.

Teaching

At the request of the American Music Center, Shirey developed composing workshops that drew inspiration from Ann Bogart’s Viewpoints, Foley techniques and deep listening. These workshops allow composers to develop strategies to use voice, found objects and found sounds, and extended techniques for traditional instruments to create new work.

Shirey was invited to be a guest lecturer at the Norwegian Institute of Art in February 2012 and September 2013. The English National Opera ran his workshop for young composers (and composing music for a short film) in March 2012. He has also run his workshop at Trinity College, Oxford England and for the animation department at Harvard.

Style and equipment

Shirey work utilizes found objects, traditional instruments, computer and modified instruments such as Industrial Flutes, Bullhorn Harmonicas, Regurgitated Music Box, Triple Extended Pennywhistles, Miniature Handbells, and other curious objects.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer made a musical instrument, called the "Sxipenspiel" for Shirey's birthday. It is made of a candlestick, pipe and bicycle bells. A sample of Neil and Sxip playing it features at the beginning of Shirey's former Gentlemen & Assassins bandmate Elyas Khan's single, "Bells".

With The Luminescent Orchestrii

With Gentlemen & Assassins