Josiah Wolf Oberholtzer

Josiah Wolf Oberholtzer is a composer and researcher, born in Boston in 1984.

His acoustic and electronic music has been played in the US, Germany and Israel. His research interests range over live electronics, algorithmic composition, music-informatics and audio analysis.

For several years he has collaborated with saxophonist Eliot Gattegno on SASHA, an interactive database of saxophone multiphonics, searchable by both pitch and idiomatic information, and has presented on the same in the Harvard Digital Musicology series. In 2012, with composers Trevor Bača and Jeffrey Treviño, he toured throughout the UC campuses, presenting on Abjad, a Python package for formalized score control. In 2009, at the Visiones Sonaras festival hosted by CMMAS in Morelia, Mexico, he presented on the use of particle systems as high-dimensional parameter control in electro-acoustic music.

In 2011, Ensemble Kaleidoskop commissioned a 22-voice string orchestra piece, Aurora/Mbrsi, for a festival commemorating the 10th anniversary of the death of Iannis Xenakis. It was premiered in Berlin’s Kammermusiksaal in August 2011.

He also works as a sound designer, helping other composers realize the electronic aspects of their compositions.

He is currently completing a doctorate in composition at Harvard University, where he has studied with Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Hans Tutschku and Chaya Czernowin. He has also attended the Summer Akademy at Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, and previously completed a Bachelors of Music at Oberlin Conservatory in 2006, where he studied with Lewis Nielson and Randolph Coleman.

He is currently taking it easy in Portland, Oregon with his partner, two cats, his record collection, and a lot of texts on ethnobotany.

Last updated: August 30, 2014