Based in New York City, Erin Rogers is a Canadian-American composer and saxophonist dedicated to new and experimental music. Named a “rising star” (Broadway World), her music has been described as “whimsical, theatrical” (Brooklyn Vegan), “a wild ride” (An Earful), “as chilling as it is funny” (Lucid Culture) and “so complex, it’s primitive.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Her works explore the intersection of chamber music, sound alchemy, and theatre, using vocals, improvisation, and performance practice to inform timbre, gesture, and theme, moving freely between acoustic and electronic worlds.
Rogers’ works have been featured at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Roulette, Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), The Knockdown Center (Queens), MATA Festival, Ecstatic Festival at Merkin Hall, Prototype Festival at HERE Arts Center, Nief-Norf Summer Festival (Knoxville), wasteLAnd (LA), Edmonton Fringe Festival; The Stone (NYC), Resonanzraum (Hamburg), French Quarter Festival (New Orleans), Celebrity Series of Boston, Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid); NyMusikk Bergen (Norway), and the World Saxophone Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland. She has collaborated with ensembles such as Decoder, Yarn|Wire, Contemporaneous, Loadbang, International Contemporary Ensemble, Stony Brook Contemporary Players, Ogni Suono, Alia Musica Pittsburgh, Versipel, Hypercube, Patchwork Duo, thingNY, Aperture Duo, and Nief-Norf, working most frequently with her four main ensembles: thingNY, New Thread Quartet, Hypercube, and Popebama, as a core performer and composer.
Rogers’ work has crossed genres from theatre-to-dance-to-installation-to-silence, through collaborations with Orange Theatre, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Harvestworks, Experiments in Opera, Abilities Dance Boston, and Music for Contemplation. Her work Trajectories was featured on the Ecstatic Music Festival, covered by the cast of Broadway’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, and is currently available on Gold Bolus Recordings. Her solo performance piece was featured on Prototype Festival’s “Out-of-Bounds” with performances at HERE Arts Center, the original Max’s Kansas City, and Trump Hotel SoHo in a statement of political protest. Her JFund commissioned work, Mother Earth, was premiered by Andrea Lee Smith and the New Thread Quartet at Carnegie Hall. Her music has been featured on the SPLICE Festival, French Quarter Festival (New Orleans), Continuum Music Festival (Memphis), Queens New Music Festival, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Re:Sound Festival (Cleveland), Ritornello Festival (Saskatoon), Ball State Festival of New Music, Guitars International Guitar Festival, Cleveland Institute of Music, Bowling Green New Music Festival, the mise-en Festival (NYC), Now Hear This Festival (Edmonton), Nief-Norf Summer Festival (Knoxville), and the Charlotte New Music Festival.
Rogers is a core member and co-artistic director of the ensembles thingNY, New Thread Quartet, HYPERCUBE, and Popebama, and has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Talea, Music from Copland House, and wild Up.
HYPERCUBE is a mixed ensemble of saxophone, electric guitar, piano, and percussion, specializing in “jarring, compelling” (Washington Post) performances of challenging, cutting-edge repertoire, with a “sense of ensemble that is not to be rivaled.” (Sequenza 21). HYPERCUBE has been featured on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, the Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva Manuel Enriquez (Mexico City), Pittsburgh’s Music on the Edge Series, the Garrick Theatre Bonavista (Canada), Roulette (Brooklyn) and (le) poisson rouge, with residencies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (CCM), CalArts, and Charlotte New Music Festival.
The “noisily virtuosic” (Cleveland Classical), experimental duo, Popebama, landed on the scene in 2016 with performances across the US, Canada and Europe including NyMusikk Bergen (Norway), Hochschule für Musik (Freiburg), VU Symposium in Park City, Utah, Studio Loos (Den Haag), Splendor (Amsterdam), and the 2017 New Music Gathering, with a featured appearance at the SPLICE Festival (University of Western Michigan), and 2018 NASA Biennial Conference in Cincinnati alongside acclaimed saxophonist, Branford Marsalis.
Theatrically-charged experimental ensemble, thingNY, has been called an “inventive new music cabal” by Time Out New York. thingNY has brought their blend of performance art and improvisation to theatres, concert halls, art galleries, and DIY venues around New York including Roulette, the Brick Theatre, Powerhouse Arena, Merkin Concert Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, and The Stone, as well as various historical homes throughout and beyond the metro area as part of their traveling concert/sound installation, IN HOUSE. New Music Box hailed thingNY’s first album, the eccentrically excessive opera ADDDDDDDDD, as “rapidfire… pulseracing… all consuming” (New Music Box). Their production, This Takes Place Close By, premiered at the Knockdown Center, a 50,000 square foot space in Maspeth, Queens, featuring a “stunningly effective mélange of singing, acting, electronics, and extended vocal techniques.” (I Care If You Listen). thingNY’s second album, minis/Trajectories, featuring works by Paul Pinto and Erin Rogers, was released in fall of 2016. Rogers made her piano debut in November 2017, as part of HERE Art Center’s production of Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence, directed by Rick Burkhardt, in association with thingNY.
Rogers is co-founder and core member of the New Thread Saxophone Quartet, an “adventurous, rule-breaking” (NewMusicBox) ensemble that has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works by exciting, young composers such as Richard Carrick, Scott Wollschleger, Amy Beth Kirsten, James Ilgenfritz, Kathryn Salfelder, and Taylor Brook. Based in New York City, New Thread has performed at Carnegie Hall, Roulette, Dance Theatre of Harlem, The Stone, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival Benefit, and Monadnock Music, and has performed or recorded more than 30 important works for saxophone quartet including the premiere recording of Elliott Sharp‘s seminal work Approaching the Arches of Corti for 4 soprano saxophones. New Thread has conducted masterclasses, residencies, and performances for student saxophonists and composers at Peabody Conservatory, Bronx Community College, Aaron Copland School (Queens College), Montclair State University, and NYU.
Rogers has performed worldwide as a soloist, chamber musician, and guest artist. As band member and instrumental arranger, she has performed with indie sensation Helado Negro, Persian star Mansour, and multi-talented artist Sweet Soubrette, and can be heard at NYC live music venues such as Bowery Ballroom, Rough Trade, Cake Shop, The Bitter End, Pete’s Candy Store, and Joe’s Pub. Rogers can be heard on New Focus Recordings, New World Records, Tonus Vivus, Edition Wandelweiser, and Gold Bolus labels. Her upcoming solo album “Dawntreader” will be released on Relative Pitch Records in September 2019. Rogers is a D’Addario Woodwinds and Conn-Selmer Artist.
Born and raised in Alberta, Canada, Rogers completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Alberta and received master’s degrees in composition and performance from Bowling Green State University. Her major teachers were Mikel Kuehn, Elainie Lillios, John Sampen, Marilyn Shrude, William H. Street, Laurie Radford and Howard Bashaw. Rogers was a featured guest artist at the annual Taiwan Saxophone Camp in Taipei, Taiwan and a featured guest composer at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Charlotte New Music Festival, and The Walden School. She has served as saxophone instructor at the New Music On the Point Summer Festival and has given lectures/masterclasses at schools across the US and Canada including Peabody Conservatory, Sarah Lawrence College, Montclair State University, Kent State University, and Illinois State University.
Rogers is a faculty member and Co-Chair of the Manhattan School of Music Contemporary Performance Program and Co-Artistic Director of the Tactus Ensemble. From 2006-2017, Rogers was production manager at Peermusic Classical, located in midtown Manhattan. She served as board member of the Music Publisher’s Association from 2013-2017. Founded in 1895, the MPA is the oldest music trade organization in the United States.