Welcome! 

I am a composer/performer/multidisciplinary artist passionate about creating
investigative, boldly innovative, memorable, multi-sensory cultural experiences.   

My work spans diverse artistic disciplines and genres to create dynamic, adventurous, and deeply relevant art and happenings 
​that engage, inspire, and transform all participants for the better.
​
​
Promo Reel

- - - - - ​- - - - - ​- - - - - ​- - - - -    ​Visit my YouTube channel here!    - - - - - ​- - - - - ​- - - - - ​- - - - - 
Interested in commissions, collaborations, or sponsorship?   
​
Contact me at jenniferawright(at)yahoo.com to inquire about about performances, corporate promotional projects & event enhancement, educational outreach, workshops, lectures, creative retreats, and art installations!

​Recent Performances

Break to Build Part Two: After the Anthropocene
Zidell Yards, South Waterfront, Portland, OR
July 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 & 28, 2024
​
Zidell Yards invited me and ProLab Dance to be Artists in Residence for another year to create a whole new multimedia show at Portland's iconic shipyards - and this is going to be even wilder than the first! 
Pun intended: this show considers a post-modern-age world wherein Nature is rewilding the built environment.

This show features two world premieres: my composition "Deep Time", which highlights my newest experimental instrument: The Hydra, a double-strung harp that I fashioned from a huge driftwood tree foraged from the Oregon Coast; and "Rainmaker", an experimental soundscape that honors the sacred and life-giving properties of water, in which water itself plays the primary sound role.

​I am grateful to have received a 2023 Arts3C grant award ​from The Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) in support of this project!


The Burned Piano Project 
exhibition at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, Portland, OR
Museum & shop hours Wed.-Sun. 11am-4pm   |   724 NW Davis St., Portland, OR 97209   |   503.226.3600

Exhibition on view April 7 - June 30, 2024

Opening reception: Sunday, April 7, 2024 

The Burned Piano Project: Creating Music Amidst the Noise of Hate began with one family’s experience of antisemitism and reminds us of the larger context of rising hate crimes today. In spring 2022, a Portland family’s home, which shares a Jewish organization’s mailing address, was destroyed by arson in the middle of the night. 


Composer and performance artist Jennifer Wright assembled an artistic team to create art from the remains of the family’s burned Steinway grand piano.  Wright also created a fantastical new instrument from the Steinway’s working parts: The Glass Piano.  Join us as Jennifer performs six concerts of the original music she has composed for this one-of-a-kind creation and learn how The Glass Piano came to life! 

Concert dates: 
4/21, 5/5, 5/19, 5/29, 6/16 & 6/30 @ 2pm
extra date added due to high demand: 6/23 @ 2pm!

​more info at www.ojmche.org   |   Concerts are free with museum admission & free for OJMCHE members.


April 27 & 28, 2024
Ancient Futures, Alberta Abbey, Portland, OR
My excellent multi-hyphenate friends Patrick Brewer and Daniel Brugh have joined me in creating an otherworldly audio-visual experience combining cinematic new music, wild CG storytelling on a huge screen, and adventurous live performance like you’ve never seen.  Join us for unforgettable, virtual-meets-reality storytelling that presents timeless themes with a sci-fi twist.  Family friendly!

June 2, 2024
Live at the Jazz Station, Eugene, OR
I'll be tearing up the ivories with two of my favorite pianists-composers-collaborators: Paul Safar and Ted Clifford!​

No ordinary life, no ordinary vision

"One of the coolest and most interesting music creators on the scene!"
- new music icon Kathleen Supove
"[One] of the organization’s [Cascadia Composers] most creative producer/composers"
- Brett Campbell, Oregon Arts Watch
"The sheer range of Wright’s creations is remarkable."
- Anna Heflin, Which Sinfonia
"Draggy, brassy, nutty, classy...Everybody knows that area composer Jennifer Wright is mad, quite mad."  
 - Matthew Andrews, Oregon Arts Watch
"There are some amazing composers you NEED to know. Like... Jennifer Wright!  Equal parts whimsy, surrealism, social commentary, “feels”, grotesquery and naughtiness, Jennifer Wright is a woman who would most likely serve as the Court Composer to the Bubblegum Princess on Adventure Time and is probably the most entertaining, exciting and important composer you haven’t heard of!"
- Joshua Cheek, music writer
 “Fearless.”
​ - Cynthia Gerdes, composer & Crazy Jane Composers founding member ​
“We love your proposal and we'd really like to do your idea, but it's actually kind of risky, and we don't want the police to show up.”
​ - Risk/Reward Festival, Portland Oregon
​“Some composers model themselves after Chopin, some after Beethoven.  But Jennifer, right out of the gate, invented a style all her own, like no one else - most composers can't do that.”
​ - Daniel Brugh, composer/past vice president of Cascadia Composers 

New videos are out!

Anthropocene (Legacy) for Skeleton Piano & electronic effects
Filmed live at THE PHOENIX PROJECT: Art in the Time of Climate Emergency at Bodyvox Theater, Portland Oregon, 2021

​There is No "Away" for Skeleton Piano, fabric, & electronic effects
Filmed live at THE PHOENIX PROJECT: Art in the Time of Climate Emergency at Bodyvox Theater, Portland Oregon, 2021

No Disrespect
a once-in-a-lifetime performance art piece for live piano, fixed media, dance, and eco-friendly spray paint
filmed live at Caldera: A Fiery Festival of New Music in Mt. Tabor Park Amphitheater, Portland, Oregon, 2018

Recent awards

​I am delighted to announce that I have received a Arts3C grant award ​from Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC)!
​
​This grant will support the music creation for the evening-length multimedia show "Break to Build 2" that I am co-producing with PoLab Dance at Zidell Yards in July 2024.


​I am delighted to announce that I have received a FY2023 Career Opportunity Program grant award ​from the Oregon Arts Commission and The Ford Family Foundation!
​
Career Opportunity grants support individual Oregon artists by enabling them to take advantage of timely opportunities that enhance their artistic careers.

​This grant supported the two performances that I presented at the 2023 New Music Gathering in June 2023: a solo set entitled "Songs of Post-Apocalyptic Instruments", which features several of the large-scale deconstructed trash instruments I have created in response to climate change, and a condensed version of the classical drag extravaganza "Fierce, Fabulous, and Fully Coiffed!"

​I'm delighted to announce that I was awarded a
2022 Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) "Make|Learn|Build" grant to mount a reprise of

Fierce, Fabulous, and Fully Coiffed: Eugene Edition!

A dragtastic new music extravaganza that celebrates LGBTQ+ fabulousness, diversity and glory! 
This version includes a new little number that I penned especially for the Eugene Edition, in light of the anti-gay and anti-trans winds that are blowing around these days: it's called "Let's Say Gay!"
Saturday, May 20th, 2023 at 7 pm at the First Christian Church in Eugene, Oregon

Picture
Having a solid rant about constructs of femininity as drag personality Tartie FaLouze
Break to Build at Zidell Shipyards: July 2023

I'm over the moon to be collaborating with ProLab Dance founder Laura Cannon on Break to Build: Mapping Portland’s Landmark Shipyard, a multifaceted project that includes the creation of a virtual and extended reality art films and a run of 7 site-specific, interactive live shows in July 2023 that bring this iconic Portland landmark to life with color, movement and creativity! 

​This project is giving me endless opportunities to expand my creativity as a composer, instrument creator and performer, and it's a treat to create art with this host of talented aerialists, movers, puppeteers, musicians and big thinkers!

I created a TON of work for this show, including my new modern aria "Luminous, like Phosphorus", new renditions of old favorites "Whalefall" (performed on a destroyed piano!) and "X Chromosome" (on six toy pianos!), a new piece for multiple didgeridoos (!!), "Fluid" for solo piano, and a lot of amazing live sound art created with a host of sound-capable installations created using on-site industrial debris: massive chains, plasma-cut steel ship parts, steel cables, and found objects of all sizes and descriptions!

​Breaking news: We'll be creating a whole new Break to Build show for summer 2024!  Stay tuned for details!

Picture
Me making actual sparks fly with massive, imaginative, and VERY heavy industrial steel instruments!

NEW VIDEOS!


​The debut performance of ExPiRhyEns: The Reed Experimental Piano and Rhythm Ensemble (founded/directed by yours truly) performing "Experience is a Form of Paralysis", a structured-improvisation piece that I composed for their inaugural show!
Reed College Friday @ Four: Chamber Music, Elliot Chapel, Reed College, Portland, Oregon on May 5, 2023.
The world premiere performance video of Whalefall (2017) for solo piano, fixed media & aerial dance!

Featuring the incredible aerial artistry of movement maestra Jordie Campbell!
The world premiere video of Side Hustle (2018) for 3 toy pianos, fixed media & dance!

Featuring the fabulous moves of Conrad Kaczor & Kiel Moton, who devised the original choreography around my crazy ideas & danced from a deep place of knowing what a side hustle feels like.
The world premiere performance of All Imaginable Actions Must Be Taken for my "Chimaera" experimental keyboard instrument/sound machine.

One of the explorations in the climate change-related work I have been doing for the past three years, this piece was filmed live at my carbon-negative, climate-change-themed show "The Phoenix Project: Art in the Time of Climate Emergency" at BodyVox Dance Theater, Portland, OR in November 2021, supported in part by the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) & Music Teachers National Association (MTNA).

400 trees were planted in forest gardens in Sub-Saharan Africa through Trees for the Future to offset the carbon costs of producing the show, including the carbon costs the audience incurred to travel to & from the concert.
A big shout-out to the sponsors that have supported my work!




Contact
jenniferawright (at) yahoo.com (email preferred) | 503-475-2406 | 3656 SE Morrison Street, Portland, OR 97214
ASCAP writer / publisher
"The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River, creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area." - Portland Indian Leaders Roundtable, 2018.  ​I recognize and thank the original caretakers of this land.

​The Skeleton Piano​

Check out my sister site
skeletonpiano.com 
to learn about the world's only Skeleton Piano!