About

Christopher McIntyre is a Brooklyn-based trombonist, curator, composer, band leader, and educator. He performs a wide variety of material on trombone and synthesizer, specializing in ensemble work that meshes improvisative & interpretive material as a player and as a composer and music director. Current projects include TILT Brass (Co-Founder & Director), Either/Or Ensemble (Curator, performer), American Composers Orchestra (performer), and frequent collaborations with choreographer Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks (composer, performer). McIntyre's trombone skills have been utilized in ensembles including SEM, Talea, Musikfabrik, The Knights, the Tri-Centric and Flexible Orchestras, Merce Cunningham Dance Co. (Legacy Tour including Park Ave Armory Events), among many others. Recordings of his performing and composing can be heard on Kairos, New World, Tzadik, Mode, Edition Modern, POTTR, zOaR, and Non-Site Records, and on Archive.org.

Over his nearly 25 year career, McIntyre has performed internationally at venues and festivals including MaerzMusik (Berlin, DE), Sacrum Profanum (Krakow, PL), Time of Music (Viitasaari, FI), and L’arsenale Festival (Treviso, IT). Within NYC, he has played in numerous venues such as Carnegie Hall (Stern and Zankel), The Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, ISSUE Project Room, Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center (multiple venues), Perelman Performing Arts Center, Metropolitan Museum, Gagosian Gallery, The Lake at Central Park, Le Poisson Rouge, and Roulette. He has worked directly with many composers, in their projects and in his own and other ensembles, including George Lewis, Raven Chacon, Joan La Barbara, Kitty Brazelton, Zeena Parkins, Lois V. Vierk, Huang Ruo, Richard Barrett, David Behrman, Jonathan Bepler (w/ Matthew Barney), Anthony Braxton, Anthony Coleman, James Fei, Fast Forward, David First, Daniel Goode, Chris Jonas, John King, Phill Niblock, Elliott Sharp, Michael Schumacher, Charles Waters, and Nate Wooley.

McIntyre has contributed extensively to the revival of composer, pianist, and vocalist Julius Eastman’s (1940-90) music, having transcribed and/or created score realizations for several works since 2006 including Stay On It (1973), Trumpet (1971), If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich (1977), and Femenine (1974). McIntyre has participated in and led numerous performances of Eastman’s music since 2006. He led ensembles during Philadelphia-based Bowerbird’s Julius Eastman Festival in May 2017 and The Kitchen’s Julius Eastman: That Which Is Fundamental Festival in January 2018. He was interviewed by the NY Times to discuss the process of realizing the score for Trumpet, premiered by TILT Brass at The Kitchen. He also led performances of Femenine by Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the combined forces of Talea Ensemble and Harlem Chamber Players, culminating in an acclaimed release on Kairos.

McIntyre's own compositions express a wide-range of musical and intellectual interests. He often experiments with spatialization, improvisative strategies, serialized rhythmic cycles, and symmetrical pitch construction. He uses conventional, instructional, and graphic notation systems to achieve these conceptual ends, frequently employing combinations of them within a single piece. He often finds inspiration in the work and ideas of Postmodernist visual artists, in particular Robert Smithson (Smithson Project), Sol LeWitt (Stuplimity Series), and Richard Serra (Precensing Pieces.) The work invests a great deal in the creativity and musicianship of its players; each performance is a unique iteration of the original material. His compositions have been performed by TILT Brass, Ne(x)tworks, 7X7 Trombone Band, Ullu, and Flexible Orchestra, with performances at venues including The Kitchen, Gagosian Gallery, City Center, ISSUE Project Room, Knockdown Center, Roulette, and Wave Farm.

Since 2018, McIntyre has been a member of the Brass & Chamber Music Faculty at Mannes School of Music at The New School. His nearly 30 years of experience in the fields of contemporary and experimental music inform every interaction with students. At Mannes, McIntyre created Chamber Brass Workshop, a course designed to expose students to a wide range of practices via performative work and research, approaching brass repertoire from historical, contemporary, and varied cultural perspectives to encourage inclusivity in 21st century brass practitioners. Prior to Mannes (his graduate school alma mater), he taught in various contexts, ranging from beginning trombone students to co-leading a lecture/workshop for Ensemble Connect at Carnegie Hall called Exploring Graphic Notation (for educators).

Beyond performing, creating, and teaching music, McIntyre is active as a curator and concert producer. He currently creates concert programs for Either/Or Ensemble, 2015 awardee of a CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. From 2007 to 2010 he was Artistic Director of MATA, a non-profit organization that commissions and presents the work of young composers. During his tenure, McIntyre conceived and launched the successful concert series Interval (co-presented with ISSUE Project Room) with friend and colleague Missy Mazzoli. He also curated and co-produced (with Mazzoli) three annual, week-long MATA Festivals, featuring groups such as Ensemble Pamplemousse, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Calder Quartet, So Percussion, NOW Ensemble, Either/Or, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. As curator for the creative music group Ne(x)tworks from 2006 to 2009, he was responsible for concert programming including three annual multi-event residencies. He served as Associate Music Curator at The Kitchen, acting as Artistic Director of the ten-piece experimental chamber orchestra Kitchen House Blend, and lead curator of live events during New Sound, New York Festival (April '04). Independent curatorial projects include Syncretics Series at ISSUE Project Room (2018-2019), a concert series of solo and duo performances by artists from contrasting corners of the experimental music field; After 9 Evenings: A 50th Anniversary Celebration at ISSUE Project Room in September, 2016; Composing With Patterns: Music at Mid-Century heard in the Rotunda at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (July '12); A full month of programs at The Stone (East Village) in June 2007 which featured the festival Trombonophilia and TILT Brass’ mini-festival ALL TILT; and multi-event projects at The Kitchen including Let's Go Swimming: A Tribute to Arthur Russell (May '08) and A Power Stronger Than Itself: A Celebration of the AACM (Oct '08). McIntyre has served on the Board of Directors for MATA Festival and Tri-Centric Foundation. 

Photo by Cameron-Kelly, courtesy ISSUE Project Room

[updated Nov. '24]