Kristi Martel

Kristi Martel an emerging Bay area sound artist, performs on both sides of the bay frequently. Kristi is from the Northeast ,and is completing her final semester of graduate studies towards her MFA in Electronic Music and Sound Recording at Mills College. She integrates her intense traditional piano training, extended vocal styles, composition, and performance art works to tell substantive stories about culture and struggle through spoken word, singing, movement and taped music. In addition to her solo efforts, she has been performing as the duo, bouche, with Bob Boster, and in her own five-voice vocal ensemble. She's performed in such venues as NYC's P.S.122 and San Francisco's 2779 (formerly Komotion). Her cassette tape kristi metal - 4 -track & live recordings 1996 by kristi martel and Sealed Lip Music may be purchased for $8, by contacting her directly at kmetal

Kristi Martel has been "playing the piano since I was a kid!" Whenever there was a piano around, she would figure out anything she could hear and learn how to play it. Her father, recognizing Kristi's intense interest and apparent knack, surprised her for her seventh birthday with a piano. In secondary school, she decided to join the choir. "Then, I joined the choir and the conductor used to have me do these competitions, even though I wasnt old enough, in both piano and singing!" It was then that Kristi's talents began to be more fully recognized.

Kristi opted out of her high school career and a strained single parent family life with her mother at sixteen, when she was accepted at Bard College in New York.

At Bard, Kristi studied with Joan Tower, Jennifer Higdon, Sarah Rothenberg, and Daron Hagen, and continues to maintain relationships with many of her teachers. "They introduced me to Meridith Monk, and Fran Richard of ASCAP", who continues to mentor Kristi. "My first year at Bard I did everything necessary to be a Drama/Dance major. I wanted to take creative writing, and dance, and visual art, theatre, and music, as well as anthropology, psychology and comparative literature! Richard Teitelbaum got me into the electronic studio and I started mutli-tracking with my voice, to choreograph to. He told me about Mills and Cal Arts. They were all very important to me."

During her final year of study at Bard, she composed When Outside Gets Inside Through the Skin, a piece for two voices, which toured the Northeast along with another one of her compositions. "I wrote my two voice piece at 19 and it won the ASCAP award my last semester at Bard. After the reception for the award recipients, I moved to NYC," she says. Kristi graduated with a degree in Music and Gender Studies.

"A lot of where I am rooted is in dance pieces. In NYC I did a tremendous amount of work with the national organization OUTMUSIC for gay lesbian and bisexual composers... A year later when I moved to San Diego, I stopped writing and proceeded to get very sick . I applied to grad schools during this time, and was accepted at UC San Diego and Mills, and chose Mills because of the community aspect. San Diego offered almost no performance art community."

Influenced by pop artist Prince, Kristi draws upon the use of extended vocal style, percussive elements. " I like funk!" "Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, Laurie Anderson were all important for me. I was raised with The Beatles, Barbara Streisand, Peter Paul and Mary, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Aretha Franklin and Janice Joplin became very important to me later on. Throwing Muses from Rhode Island..."."Kate Bush was the first person who sounded anything like the music I heard in my head". In performance art, Yoko One and Carollee Schneenann have become important to Kristi as well.

On spirituality:
"I have strong values in myself that I adhere to. I have a huge reverence of life. I don't know about religion, really. A lot of my connection is very specific to singing, that's when I feel my whole self is really there. That is a very spiritual thing for me."

On identifying as a women composer:
"I am a women and a composer but I don't usually think I embody 'women composer'! I embody composer, performer, extended techniques vocalist, dancer, pianist, performance artist, writer. I don't usually link 'women' with it, I feel like that's obvious! I don't agree with all of the ways I have been taught to be female. I don't like some of the ways I enact my gender. I don't like that I feel responsible to do the dishes before I do my work! It's important to do the work. To free other women. It's part of the healing, freeing thing.

I live with a consciousness of sexism daily. That is something I am sensitized to - another barrier I'm constantly crossing parts of. I mean I'm in classes even at Mills, I get pissed off with the men in the grad program, arguing with each other about their intellectual concepts that they think are so great. They're not really talking about anything that's real to me... I would get angry at their attitude about how superior their thing was, and that there was no place to talk about what my thing was. There was no room to talk about it. My stuff was always being pushed to the end of the class to be presented.

Frequently they talk about the 'emotional richness' of abstract forms... I mean emotional richness of abstract forms? If you are not communicating anything real to me, why do it? ... why bother? What they are talking about I'm just not interested in. A lot of the time [what they talk about] is not what is important to me. Why sit around getting so much joy out of something that doesn't effect anybody - that just effects me? I really enjoyed algebra I was so into all of those grids - and how to make everything make sense, and applying systems to each other - I get that I'm actually really good at it, but I'm much more fulfilled by teaching low income kids. I really love what I can give those kids and what I get from them."

Desired achievement:
"By telling stories I connect to other women , and men too, hopefully, and heal. Women are particularly important for me to reach. It's when are stories are hidden that they are so self destructive. When we tell them, we find we're not so alone, and we find that we do have community. It's about helping people to deal directly, and take responsibility for things, and change consciousness - to increase awareness. I like what I do and I feel it's important."

Kritsi wants her music to increase awareness of differences - privileges, regardless of status and position in society. She shares some of her personal obstacles:
"Fear about money is HUGE for me. I grew up in a single parent household and my mom was from a very working class working background. There was never enough. I grew up believing that... I was a burden... It was too hard. Thats probably one of my biggest things, that a) I do this work, and b) that I get paid for it.

I want a more visible place in society, and to be more secure financially. Part of my goals are very community based and the other part is more self serving. Though I 'm not totally comfortable with that desire...that is what I want. That is how I define success. I think success for me would be to have the community to not have to do it all myself, and be able to live off my work whatever shape that takes. I would like it to be a self supporting operation!"

On industry representation;
"I would like the option of being able to have the audience and access afforded to me with a large label. I'm not interest in supporting big business, but I currently don't make enough to make a sizable impact."

hen asked how she wanted to be remembered, she replied:
"As someone working out of love, that I cared enough to fight for us... To say something."

Kristi is currently working on 'Flood'. A 'dialogue' that began May 5th , 1995 when she was rushed to the emergency room with, "What no doctor was willing to call Toxic Shock Syndrome." "I was violated by the doctor's which brought up all of this rage for me. I was enraged about being violated, about not getting decent medical care, and any real information about my condition...Even though it (the piece) started as being very critical of the medical system, it became a more introspective 'my history' thing."

Kristi Martel's thesis performance is currently scheduled for March 17, 1998, in the Concert Hall, and April 17, 1998, in the Bender Room at Mills College in Oakland, California.

1994 ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers for my two-voice piece, When Outside Gets Inside Through the Skin.

Frank and Bryon Worldwide Movers commissioned Flight in 1997.

kristi martel 4-track & live recordings copyright 1996 by kristi martel and Sealed Lip Music cassette can be bought for $8 from kristi directly, email her at kmetal

FAB WM title release, Luna Sea Women's Performance Project, SAN FRANCISCO, CA October 17 -19, 1997 performed improvisational vocal material for Dawn Franks choreography.

Dividing Lines: Race and Class Luna Sea Womens Performance Project, SAN FRANCISCO, CA June 6, 7 & 13 - 15, 1997 performed original compositions.

Several performances, 2779 (formerly KOMOTION), SAN FRANCISCO, CA, March 6, May 31, August 29 & November 22, 1997 extended voice, piano and performance art performances of original work, some solo and some as the vocal and electronic duo, bouche, with BobBoster in three parts:

Black-Eyed Susan, The Center , NYC, April 16, 1995 an eighty five minute single person soundimage concert telling stories which problematize popular constructions of love and lover

New Tribe, P.S. 122, NYCMarch 25, 1995, three original compositions + a choreopoem

Gowanus Women's Series, Gowanus Arts Exchange, BROOKLYN, NY, March 4, 1995 three original compositions + a choreopoem

Open Up Yer Face And Sing, Blum Hall @ Bard College, NY, April 20, 22, & 23, 1994 a two hour multi-media project exploring the development of self and other through a culture of sexual oppression including original works as well as works by Bach, Crumb, Annie Ross, and Billie Holiday .

Many of the compositions listed here have been organized in various groupings or shows:

Last Updated: 2/3/06