Wendy Mae Chambers

Wendy Mae Chambers (born January 24, 1953) is an American composer, currently living in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey. Chambers studied at Barnard College from 1971 to 1975, where she received her B.A. in music, and where she studied with Kenneth Cooper, Nicholas Roussakis, Jack Beeson and Charles Wuorinen. She earned her M.A. in composition at Stony Brook University in New York, where she studied between 1975 and 1977.

Her large-scale music events were inspired by the work of Christo and Andy Warhol, and the desire to reach an audience beyond traditional new music audiences. In addition, she knew John Cage well and her work 12 squared for twelve percussionists (1994) is a voodoo tone poem written in his memory. By staging works outside the concert halls and into the public sphere, she has succeeded in bringing her music outside the domain of specialists and academics.

Chambers is also well known for her work writing for and performing with the toy piano. In 1994, the New York Times commented, "Ms. Chambers is not only a composer, but also possibly the world's foremost virtuoso on the toy piano."

Currently she is working on a musical system and set of compositions based on the I Ching (Book of Changes), an ancient Chinese text, which led Cage to the develop the technique of "chance operations" in the 1950s.

(instrumentation, place, and year of premier)

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