Erin Gee, US-based composer/vocalist, has created the Mouthpiece Series in an experimental vocal/instrumental world. It began as one piece for solo voice in 2000 and has grown to over 40 works for orchestra, opera, vocal ensemble, chamber ensemble, and string quartet.
Erin Gee was born in San Luis Obispo, California in 1974. She studied piano with Réne Lecuona at the University of Iowa, receiving a B.A. in piano in 1997. She continued studies there with Lawrence Fritts for her M.M. in composition (2002). Gee moved to Graz, Austria in 2001 to study with Beat Furrer and received her Ph.D from the Kunstuniversität Graz in 2007.
In 2006, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna commissioned Gee’s first orchestral piece, Mouthpiece IX, which won the Picasso-Mirò Medal from the International Rostrum of Composers. Mouthpiece X was performed at the Witten Festival by Klangforum Wien. The Zurich Opera House premiered Gee’s short opera SLEEP (2009), a winner of the Teatro Minimo Prize. In 2014, the RSO Vienna premiered Mouthpiece XX with sibling-collaborator Colin Gee. Shillim: Mouthpiece 34, an audio/video installation, was created for the Centre Pompidou in Paris Neurons Exhibit in early 2020 and was presented during the Vertigo Forum at IRCAM.
Gee’s commissions and collaborations include: Mouthpiece 28, written for TAK ensemble; Mouthpiece 37, written for lovemusic collective; and Mouthpiece 39 written for JACK.
Gee’s awards for composition include the Herb Alpert Award for the Arts (2023), a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Koussevitsky Award, the Impuls Prize, the Rome Prize (2008), the Charles Ives Fellowship (2015), and the Arts and Letters Award in Music (2022) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has been the featured composer at the Etchings Festival, 4020 Festival, Niente Forte Festival, the Loretta Project, and the Mizzou International Composers Festival.
Erin Gee has been full professor of composition at Brandeis University, Boston/Waltham, Massachusetts, since 2023.