RogueArt CD

Discounted Lots

Biography

Nils Bultmann is a violist, improviser, and composer currently based in the San Francisco bay area. Rooted in classical technique and tradition, he has developed his own voice within the context of a wide variety of musical styles and art forms. Active as a performer in the United States and Europe, he plays both classical repertoire as well as his own compositions and is involved in collaborative projects of dance, film, and avant-garde improvised music. He has generated an expansive body of work in the recording studio, including solo and multi-track viola music as well as collaborative and improvised material. He also writes through-composed works for traditional instrumentation including for solo pieces, string quartets, and orchestral music.Nils was born in 1975 to a German father and American mother and was raised in Madison WI, while travelling often to Germany. His mother introduced him to music at an early age and he began to study viola and piano. Nils received his B.A. from the University of Madison-Wisconsin on a music scholarship, studying viola performance with Sally Chisholm as well as German Literature. His orchestral engagements include the National Repertory Orchestra, the Jerusalem International Symphony, and the New World Symphony under conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas. Nils has collaborated with and received commissions from the Jin Wen Yu, Li-Chiao-Ping, Kendra Kimball, and Kaeja dance companies. He has been featured on Douglas Rosenberg’s Dance for Camera series on public television and was a guest musician at the Contact-Improvisation dance festival in Budapest Hungary. As an improviser, he has worked with Ken Butler, David Wessel, Frank Gratkowski, Myra Melford, Evan Parker, and Roscoe Mitchell. In September 2004 he was a guest at the International Symposium for Improvised music in Munich Germany to perform two new works by jazz Saxophonists’ Roscoe Mitchell and Evan Parker, as part of the Transatlantic Art Ensemble which was recorded and released on ECM records. Nils has been the recipient of many awards including the Music Omi composer’s residency fellowship in upstate New York, the Djerassi artist residency in northern California, and at the Ucross Foundation’s resident artist program in Wyoming. He has received several Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission arts grants and was the recipient of the Madison Arts Council Signature Arts Grant. He self-produced and recorded a CD compilation of his own compositions, Forgiveness, including a Solo Sonata for Viola, which appeared in full score with review in the Journal for the American Viola Society. His current CD “Terminally Unique” featuring guest musicians Paddy Cassidy (Djembe), Parry Karp (Cello) and Roscoe Mitchell (sax and flute) was recently released soon on Mutable Records.