Archie Carey

Archie Carey is a bassoonist and composer living in Los Angeles and working in the world. He considers the art of music as a meditative and stimulating creative process whether it’s learning to play a new piece on the bassoon or composing a new piece with pen, paper, stones, sand, field recordings, analog electronics, and more.

Archie has had the opportunity to perform music with various orchestras, and chamber groups from the baroque to experimental new music in venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Carnegie Hall, Zipper Hall, Avery Fischer Hall, and concert halls throughout China.
Archie is a founding member of wild Up, and The Joshua Trio, and has performed regularly with The Dogstar Orchestra, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, and other adventurous music groups in and around Los Angeles.

Archie has presented his own work at REDCAT, The Portland Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, SOMArts, and many other spaces and places throughout the US, Germany, Vietnam, Israel, and Iceland.

Archie’s work as a composer aims to magnify sound, pitch, timbre, and environment to make the subtlest details a point of focus, achieved by using long durations, minimal pitch content, and contrasts between extremely high volumes and silence. Music is a mentally moving art form that he approaches with interest in abrasive textures, hypnotic drones, alternative tunings, and a sense for a physical space to provide an audience with a unique experience. Archie is interested in writing music that is not only meditative for the listener, but also for the performer, to create a communal sense of timelessness inside a performance space. Archie’s music has been described as “convincing, and a creative use of extended techniques to project a vivid image…..warm and elegant piece that exploits the full color palette of the brass and woodwinds.” (Sequenza 21). In solo work and in collaboration with dance and film he has been experimenting with field recording, analog electronics, aspects of performance art and often times combinations of all three.

Archie has degrees in bassoon performance and music composition from the Purchase Conservatory of Music and the California Institute of the Arts, with some of his most influential teachers being Marc Goldberg, Julie Feves, Michael Pisaro, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, and Ulrich Krieger.