Chris Kallmyer

“not everyone would call this music. . .” – Los Angeles Times

Chris Kallmyer makes sound with everyday objects to explore the processes, customs, and environments through which humans have altered landscape and place. His work explores a participatory approach to making music through touch, taste, and process to point to who we are and where we live. Chris has presented work at the Walker Art Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Hammer Museum, the Getty Center,  and other spaces in America and Europe. Chris works frequently with the Echo Park-based Machine Project and is a member of the modern-music-collective wild Up. He earned his MFA in music from the California Institute of the Arts where he studied music with Vinny Golia, Wadada Leo Smith, Tom Stevens, Morton Subotnick, and Aashish Khan.

As an artist Chris has created projects with amplified sheep, spontaneous fanfares, music for cheese, sonic-lawn-care, installations in igloos, a guide to acoustical gardening, and a formula for new songs by Hall and Oates. At the Hammer Museum Chris worked with Machine Project to create a theater inside a coatroom in the lobby of the museum. The space, which was dubbed The Little William Theater, featured 2-minute concerts for two people at a time and commissioned 350 brief new works from composers like Christian Wolff, Anne LeBaron, and Ben Johnston.

In fall 2015 Chris is an Artist in Residence at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, where he will collect and refine clay from the banks of the Mississippi River to make earthenware musical instruments. The clay chimes will be used to explore the Pulitzer’s architecture in collaboration with local artists/activists and LA-based musician Andrew Tholl.