About Chris Vaisvil

Hello, I am a 12 tet and microtonal composer who works at the edge between acoustic and electronic instruments. I have a BS in Chemistry and an AA in Music and I find that each discipline informs the other. Occasionally I venture into the land of electrical, mechanical and acoustic engineering to modify or create DIY instruments as well.

My art is about now and is a response to the inspiration I feel from the visual, musical, poetic, and literary art of 20th and 21st centuries as well as science and world events. The art of our period I think has so much to say about who we are, where we have been, and what we will, or will not be as a community – a world village – a people, a unity of souls divided by the gulf of physical being and monetary inequity but united in spirit, desires, hopes and dreams. My goal is to communicate with you and if what I do speaks to you then I as an artist have succeeded.

I have performed several times in Urbana IL at the Independent Media Center in association with Oddmusic Urbana and performed at the Xenharmonic Praxis 2011 held at the Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia. My music has received radio play and I have had pieces selected for the 2010 Voxnovus / UnTwelve 60 by 60 (17ET Jazz), and 2011 Vox Novus 60×60 international mix (Free Sue). These pieces have been performed in Chicago, New York City, Boston and other cities internationally. (Vox Novus 60×60) Additionally my composition “Ediacaran Garden” for classical guitar has been selected and performed by Kenji Haba in New York City as part of the Vox Novus Composer’s Voice series. A collaboration, As If – Spoken, with Kat Desiel, Christiane Offbar and myself in received terrestial air play in Brussels (July 9th, 2013) on Radio Panik 104.5 FM. My composition “Prelude for a Centaur Tuned Piano” was performed live over terrestrial radio (July 20th 2013) by Aaron Krister Johnson on Chicago’s classical radio station WFMT. You can stream the show it here or downland the podcast. In November of 2015 my performance at Wake Forest University “Runway Lights in 128” was played on terrestrial radio KEBF on Ted Peterson’s “Musical Explorations” show.

In September of 2015 I was honored to be invited by Johnny Reinhard and his American Festival of Microtonal Music to perform in the Winston-Salem North Carolina Microfest. I played the Linnstrument and Lap Steel guitar in 128 (8th octave of the overtone series) tuning. Venues included the New Winston Museum, Green Street Church, and the Brendle Recital Hall at Wake Forest University. In April of 2016 I was interviewed by “Words on New Music” podcast.

I am privileged to be listed as an internationally recognized microtonal composer by Franck Jedrzejewski in his book ‘Dictionnaire des musiques microtonales'(2014).

I was cited in Gary McAndrew’s paper “Use of a Quantum Number With Beat Frequencies in Psychoacoustics”

I am involved in a number of microtonal internet gatherings such as the Facebook Xenharmonic Alliance and Microtonal Music and Theory groups. As part of my microtonal reach out host full albums of music by other artists and myself, provide Gene Ward Smith an example area for his tuning research, host a ton of examples by myself and others in a lot of different tunings. (My offer of web hosting for the music of fellow artists on a case by case basis. Please contact me if you have a need and can follow US copyright law.)

Unless otherwise noted my (Chris Vaisvil’s) music is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license.

I accept requests for composing scores and/or audio rendering of the scores on a commission basis under the company banner of Vaisvil Compositions, LLC. The music you commission will be composed to your specifications. This can be music for your film, text, poetry, or lyrics set to music and can be exclusively for your own performance as you desire. Contact me at chrisvaisvil @ gmail dot com to discuss the project you have in mind.

If you want to support my work in general you can donate in the amount that is appropriate for you by emailing me for my how to do so. All funds will be used to support the music and related work that I am donating to the public under the Creative Commons License. If you would like a physical memento of your donation I would be glad to provide a CD or DVD of my work.

you can follow me on twitter at @vaisvil where I tweet my work and the work of other microtonalists that I like.

In a hurry?