Chris Ryan Williams

Chris Ryan Williams is an artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. His work takes the form of electroacoustic composition and performance installation and deals with decoding family history, ambience, and time-space compression.

His EP ‘Live’ received praise from Jazz Right Now and The Quietus for “dazzling collaged pieces that ricochet between improvised passages and written material” (Peter Margasak, The Quietus). Williams’ work has been performed and presented extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe at Venice Biennale, Roulette Intermedium, Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Royal Danish Playhouse, National Sawdust, Performa Biennial, and he has been commissioned by Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, WasteLAnd, American Composers Forum, and International Contemporary Ensemble. 

He has been in residence with BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Musik Installationen Nürnberg, was a Harvestworks: Technology Immersion Program 2024 resident and is 2023 American Composers Forum Fellow and 2024 Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow. He has collaborated with creators including Ralph Lemon, Eyvind Kang, Patrick Shiroishi, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Imani Dennison, Wendy Eisenberg, Luke Stewart, Pink Siifu, and Marjani Forte-Saunders. Williams also has an ongoing collaboration with cellist Lester St. Louis under the moniker HxH, a duo which has “embraced the challenge of bringing laptop instrumentalism into a wide personal world by making sounds that are at once art-minded and accessible, and true to the tenets of spontaneous composition and “social music,” (Piotr Orlov, Pioneer Works)

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