Amy DeNIO
Member of Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame, AMY DENIO composes for modern dance, film, theater, and TV. She has a four-octave vocal range and plays guitar, bass, alto sax, clarinet and accordion. She has written more than 500 works and has produced over 60 recordings solo and in collaboration with artists worldwide. She operates her own recording studio, record label, and publishing company, Spoot Music. She has won many awards and artistic fellowships for her prodigious output.
She is currently working on a commission from Pat Graney Dance Company for her new multi-media performance “Attic”, to be premiered in Seattle in 2021. She is also collaborating with her all-women sax quartet and Correo Aereo to create “Mujer o Bruja?” (Woman or Witch?), a multi-media work looking at the role of women in Mexican culture.
Her song cycle for chamber Orchestra “Truth Is Up For Grabs” is composed for 21 instruments, created in collaboration with video artist James Drage. This work was funded in part by 4 Culture and Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, and was presented by the Seattle Composers Alliance. She released the audio recording on Spoot Music in January 2020, and is working on producing a multi- media iteration for the internet.
Recent chamber works include a commission from Seattle Theater Group to compose a sound track for silent film “Variete” (Dupont, 1925) which was premiered at the Paramount Theater in February 2019. KINO LORBER commissioned her to score and perform/produce the sound tracks for “A Daughter of the Law” (Grace Cunard, 1921) and “The Strike” (Alice Guy-Blaché , 1912).
She has created several multi-media works in collaboration with her internationally recognized group, the all-women Tiptons Saxophone Quartet. Shop of Wild Dreams was produced in collaboration with Croatian painter Daniel Zezelj and film maker Aric Mayer, and MYTHUNDERSTANDINGS involved Saanich Tribe story teller and musician Paul ‘Che-oke-ten’ Wagner and film maker Adam Sekuler.
She scored “The Naked Proof” (Hook, 2003), which premiered at Seattle International Film Festival, and was the composer and sound designer for “Pangaea’s Brood” and “Synchrony in Estrus”, stop-motion animated films created by filmmaker Thomas Edward.
She’s received the New York City Bessie Award for her soundtrack to David Dorfman Dance’s piece “Sky Down”, and her collaboration “GIRL GODS” with Pat Graney won the Bessie Award for Best Production in 2016. Her creative collaborations have received awards from Meet the Composer, New Music USA, and she has received the Seattle Mayor’s Award. She’s been awarded fellowships at Civitella Ranieri in Italy and from Artist Trust to live in Ireland.
Denio has played concerts and taught musical workshops in festivals, clubs, squats, prisons, churches, sanctuaries, and subways on 6 continents ~ solo and with historic American rock trio Tone Dogs, her all-women sax quartet The Tiptons, Balkan group Kultur Shock, and many other international projects. Her compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Venice Biennale and from the top of Metro buses in Seattle.