Performer Biographies

Zachary James Watkins studied composition with Janice Giteck, Jarrad Powell, Robin Holcomb and Jovino Santos Neto at Cornish College. In 2006, Zachary received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College where he studied with Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. Zachary has received commissions from Cornish College of The Arts, The Microscores Project, the Beam Foundation, Somnubutone Radio Series free103point9.org, sfsound and the Seattle Chamber Players.

Mark Applebaum (b. 1967, Chicago) is the Leland & Edith Smith Professor of Composition at Stanford University where he served as John Philip Coghlan Fellow, received the 2003 Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching, and was named the Hazy Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied with Brian Ferneyhough, Joji Yuasa, Rand Steiger, and Roger Reynolds. He received his baccelaureate, magna cum laude, from Carleton College where he studied composition with Phillip Rhodes, completed a senior thesis that took him to Mexico City to interview Conlon Nancarrow, and received the 1989 Sigred & Erling Larsen Award in the Creative and Performing Arts.

Babatunji is a dance artist, choreographer, and creative innovator based out of San Francisco. Though never formally trained as a child, Babatunji was always moving his body to the beat. At the age of 15, he discovered the art of hip hop. Following this epiphany of love, he grew up through his teens breaking and popping on street corners in Hilo, Hawai’i. After being “discovered” by a local dance instructor, he began his formal training in various styles of dance, including ballet. This would inevitably lead him to Lines Ballet’s Training Program, and from there, into the company. For over a decade he has worked with one of the greatest American choreographers, Alonzo King.

Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist working with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound and image with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. In addition to her performances, she has a growing body of installation works using multi-channel sound and video.

The Living Earth Show exists to push the boundaries of technical and artistic possibility while amplifying voices, perspectives, and bodies that the classical music tradition has often excluded. The organization uses the tools of experimental classical music to facilitate the creation of its collaborators’ most ambitious musical visions and create work that reflects and responds to our world.