(Short bio)

David Watson is a creative musician. His work includes improvisation, composition, making music for film and dance as well as organizing music events. Watson has worked in improvised and experimental music, maintaining an investigative and questioning approach. Since 1991 he’s been on a journey to reinvent the bagpipe as a new-music instrument. He has deliberately made pieces for different performance contexts – concert stages, clubs and the outdoors. He has made pieces inspired by processions and parades, and composed experimental works for pipe bands, for brass bands, as well as for amateurs and non-musicians.

Originally from New Zealand, in the early 1980’s Watson was a founder of the Braille Collective (Wellington, NZ), documented in the recently published book Future Jaw Clap. Moving to New York in 1987 and starting at the Amica Bunker - a windowless ten-foot square basement in the East Village -Watson immersed himself in the downtown scene. He played in the wide variety of situations available, from Experimental Intermedia to Knitting Factory to CBGB’s and many others. He recorded with Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, produced Chris Mann, premiered a Robert Ashley piece, and premiered Cobra with John Zorn in Japan. The range of situations, from makeshift venues through to highly purposed, were all parts of a continuing conversation

He has worked with Lee Ranaldo and Tony Buck in the trio Glacial for 25 years. He worked with Phill Niblock (1933-2024) for over 30 years, performing many of Niblock's pieces and making five works together.

Watson has collaborated extensively with choreographers, notably Moriah Evans and Jamar Roberts. He was music director for Cindy Bernard’s adaption of The Inquisitive Musician (LACMA 2011; The Stedelijk Museum 2013), which dramatizes conflicts between folk and art musicians.

Watson’s belief in artist-led initiatives has led him to organize hundreds of music events - festivals, series and concerts- most recently series in New York under the monikers of WOrK, Shift and Striped Light. These have given work a platform that might not otherwise have found one, and resulted in his collaborations with a new generation of artists, notably Judith Hamman, Bill Nace and Luke Stewart.

He has been awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2023), was an Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX (2022) and Art Omi in Ghent, NY (2011). He had held residency weeks at The Stone, NYC in 2017, 2021, 2022.

Watson earned his B.A.(History) from Victoria University Wellington (NZ). M.F.A. (IMA) from Hunter College CUNY, Graduate Certificate (PIMA) from Brooklyn College, CUNY. He taught Sonic Arts at Sch0ol of the Museum of Fine Arts,, Boston, MA 2000-2002.

He has taught at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY since 2002.

David Watson

Overview: curator, organizer

David Watson Short Bio

Glacial

Compositions for Dance