Seattle-based Jherek Bischoff is equal parts songwriter, producer, performer and composer. He has also been called a “pop polymath” (The New York Times), a “Seattle phenom” (The New Yorker), and “the missing link between the sombre undertones of Ennio Morricone and the unpredictability of John Cale” (NME), but this music speaks for itself.
 
In his 30 odd years, Jherek has played in numerous bands and musical configurations including Parenthetical Girls, Xiu Xiu, The Degenerate Art Ensemble, The Dead Science, Amanda “Fucking” Palmer, the Wordless Music Orchestra, and a various & sundry mix of musicians around the world. Jherek is an instinctive collaborator who has done so since his formative days spent sailing the world with his family, hopping ashore at various ports to serve as an impromptu Bischoff family backing band to locals. (Don’t get the wrong idea. This wasn’t a luxury trip by a privileged family. The Bischoff clan scrimped and saved in order to take this surreal, multi-year trip.)
 
Which is to say, Jherek collaborates instinctively and trusts himself to be his own best teacher. Indeed, all this music-making has largely been self-taught.
 
That last bit can be the most surprising, especially in the context of his new album Composed–a meticulously arranged, multi-tracked album of nine orchestral pieces featuring a different guest vocalist on almost every track, including luminaries David Byrne, Caetano Veloso, Mirah, Carla Bozulich (Evangelista, Geraldine Fibbers), Craig Wedren (Shudder To Think), Dawn McCarthy (Faun Fables), Zac Pennington (Parenthetical Girls), Soko and more. Avant ringers like Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier and Wilco’s Nels Cline provide instrumental solos.
 
DIY in the purest sense, Jherek first composed the album on a ukulele. Next he produced, engineered, and mastered the album, resolving to achieve an orchestral sound without the orchestral cost by recording the music one instrument at a time using just one mic and a laptop.(He spent one summer in his native Seattle, biking around town his gear in a backpack, cruising between various musicians’ houses, capturing their performance one track at a time.) The result bares traces of his past playing in DIY bands, his desire to make great pop music, and a love affair with the potential of the orchestra, all informed by his deep familiarity of a catalog of compositional ideas & technique. It took years.
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Jherek Bischoff on Fresh Air

Inner Greatness feat. Adam Brisbin, Doug Wieselman, and Greg Saunier
 
Greg Saunier on Twitter

Contemporaneous is a New York-based ensemble of nineteen musicians dedicated to performing and promoting the most exciting music of now. Through concerts, collaborations, recordings, and outreach programs, we have created a thriving community of artists and audience members united by a shared love for the best music being written in our time.
 
Founded in 2010 at Bard College, Contemporaneous has to date played over sixty shows at venues including Merkin Concert Hall, Roulette, Galapagos Art Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and The Stone. We have been guest artists at the MATA Interval Series, Tribeca New Music Festival, Neighborhood Classics, Music with a View, Make Music New York, and in California at the Berkeley Arts Festival, and our recordings have been featured on many radio programs, including WNYC’s “New Sounds” and WRTI’s “Now is the Time.”
 
Contemporaneous supports the work of new and established composers, encouraging artists to take risks, challenge expectations, and defy constraints. To date, we have performed more than thirty world premieres by composers from around the globe, including Jherek Bischoff, Conor Brown, Ryan Chase, Kyle Gann, Yotam Haber, and Molly Joyce. In April, 2012, Innova Recordings released our debut album, Stream of Stars — Music of Dylan Mattingly, comprising music written for the ensemble by our founding co-artistic director.
 
Contemporaneous often collaborates with musicians and artists from other fields, among them, Amanda Palmer, Fifth Veil, Yassou Benedict, and Marjorie Folkman. We have also presented educational programs for such institutions as New York’s P.S. 142 and P.S. 321, the Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra, and the Poughkeepsie Day School. Contemporaneous is a self-sustaining, independent, not-for-profit organization, fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas.