Welcome! 

I am a pianist, composer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, producer, and experimental instrument creator whose work investigates social and environmental issues through dynamic sonic experiences.

​Freely blending diverse disciplines and media, my work is deeply rooted in inquiry and intention, foundational social relevance, and multi-sensory shared experience, resulting in passionately crafted, boldly innovative, memorable cultural happenings and artifacts.   
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Promo Reel

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

​Upcoming Projects & Performances

Keep an eye on this page and my social media accounts for more info about these projects coming in 2025 and beyond!
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Guest Artist: Ambient Ecology Festival (Eugene, OR)
June 7, 2025
 Come out to this outdoor new music festival from the folks at The Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble (EDME)!  My set will feature several of my experimental instruments, voice, and Ukrainian hand pan drum.

Concerts with Kathleen Supove (Portland, OR)
late ​June, 2025
More details coming soon!

LONG STRINGS at Zidell Yards (Portland, OR)
​July 18 & 19, 2025
A once-in-a-lifetime concert event featuring my newest (and by far the biggest!) Long Strings Instrument with sounding strings over 120 feet long, along with several of the massive instruments I have built at Zidell Shipyards from over 2000 lbs of steel industrial debris!
I will be joined by distinguished artists Paul Safar (medieval hurdy-gurdy), Lucas Marshall Smith (transcendent throat singing), and Diane Chaplin (cello).

I am delighted to announce that I have been awarded a fully-funded Portland Arts Project grant ​from the 
Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) to support LONG STRINGS! 

Solo art instrument show at PLACE (Portland, OR)
December 2025 - January 2026
The first retrospective exhibition and concert series featuring my art instruments and several new pieces/installations!

Everything is Effed Up! (tour locations TBA)
The title says it all, really!  Collaborator Lucas Marshall Smith and I will *not* hold back...we're here for all the gory details in this original music theater romp we're composing about what's going sideways in the world these days!

Incomplete Archaeologies: The Zidell Recordings (Portland, OR)
In production: a compelling suite of video shorts featuring the industrial debris instruments I have built at Zidell Shipyards 


​Recent Performances

Break to Build Part Two: After the Anthropocene
Zidell Yards, South Waterfront, Portland, OR
July 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 & 28, 2024
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This large-scale collaboration with ProLab Dance, created as an Artist in Residence for a second year at Portland's iconic Zidell shipyards, considers a post-modern-age world wherein Nature is re-wilding 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 & concert series 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   
and at The Burned Piano Project page HERE.

Ancient Futures
April 27 & 28, 2024

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. 

Featuring excerpts from my Skeleton Piano suite Obscure Terrain and Singularity for fixed media and my experimental 'junk' percussion/long strings instrument, the Cloud Gamelan.

​For the first time, The Skeleton Piano showed the secrets of its unusual sound production techniques on its very own Jumbotron!

An unforgettable, family-friendly night of virtual-meets-reality storytelling that presented timeless themes with a sci-fi twist.  

Live at the Jazz Station
June 2, 2024
The Jazz Station, Eugene, OR

What incredible fun to tear up the ivories with two of my favorite pianists-composers-collaborators: Paul Safar and Ted Clifford!

Featuring the world premiere of the piano arrangement of my piece Welcome to the Future, Citizen #2406, the audience participation shenanigans of This Is My Matrix Sweater, and Relatively Minor Infractions with saxophone wiz Daniel Vega!​

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!

Keeping Is Not The Same As Carrying for The Glass Piano
Filmed during the exhibit "The Burned Piano: Creating Music Amidst the Noise of Hate" (April-June 2024) at The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in Portland, Oregon.
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This piece features The Glass Piano, an experimental instrument that I built from the remains of a Steinway grand piano ruined in an act of arson that destroyed a Jewish family’s home in Portland, OR. I combined the keys & hammer action of the piano with a new resonant body and tuned borosilicate glass rods of varying lengths/diameters as sound producers.

​Let's Say Gay! for voice, piano, toy piano & tambourine
Filmed live at FIERCE, FABULOUS AND FULLY COIFFED! Eugene Edition at First Christian Church, Eugene Oregon, 2023
Performing as my drag ally alter-ego, Tartie FaLouze with the fabulous "Fierce" cast!

​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

Dream Evolve Flourish Die for Ukrainian hand pan drum, voice, sand, shakers, amplified natural objects & dance
Filmed live at THIS IS THE PLACE! Arts Festival at PLACE Studios, Portland, Oregon 2022

​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


​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!
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!