John King, composer, guitarist and violinist, has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet; Red {an orchestra}, Ethel; the Albany Symphony/“Dogs of Desire”, Bang On A Can All-Stars; Mannheim Ballet; New York City Ballet/Diamond Project, Stuttgart Ballet, Ballets de Monte Carlo; as well as the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. His string quartets have also been performed by the Eclipse Quartet (LA) and the Mondriaan Quartet (Amsterdam). His quartet Crucible has premiered many of his compositions at The Stone (June 2007), The Kitchen (April 2009), Lincoln Center Festival (July 2011) and Roulette (2012).
He has written six operas: ping, with text by Samuel Beckett, which was premiered as part of the “Experiments in Opera” festival, spring 2014; impropera, using randomly selected text msg’s from the singers’ cell phones, herzstück/heartpiece, based on the text of Heiner Müller, premiered at the 1999 Warsaw Autumn Festival and presented at the Kitchen NYC in 2000 (a double-opera, co-written with Krzysztof Knittel); la belle captive based on texts by Alain Robbe-Grillet, premiered at Teatro Colon/CETC in Buenos Aires in 2003, and toured to London’s ICA (Fronteras Festival) in 2004 and The Kitchen in 2005; and Dice Thrown, based on the Stéphane Mallarmé poem; an excerpt of which was performed by New York City Opera as part of its VOX series in May 2008. The complete staged version was presented at CalArts April 23-24, 2010., as well as his most recent SapphOpera, using fragments of Sappho’s poetry.
He has three recent CD releases of music for string quartet; 10 Mysteries and All Steel (Tzadik); and Ethel (Cantaloupe). He was Music Curator at The Kitchen from 1999-2003 and from 2002-2011 he was a co-director of the Music Committee at the Merce Cunnningham Dance Company. He received the Music/Sound Award for 2014 from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and also he is the recipient of the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts for Music.