Evelyn Saylor

Evelyn Saylor is a composer and performer from New York City, currently based in Berlin, Germany. She writes electronic music for the concert, for the theater, for modern dance, and for film. She is also active as a singer, performer, pianist, synth player, and sound technician for live electronics. 

Saylor finds arresting sounds in unexpected places and explores their materiality and sonic properties in her compositions through close recording and electronic manipulation. Found and created instruments, synthesis, processing, field recordings, and the human voice play a large role in her music. 

She has received commissions from the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, the Academy of the Arts in Berlin, the Heroines of Sound Festival, the STEGREIF.orchester, the Orfeo Duo and others, and was the recipient of the Mellon Elemental Arts Award. She has written music for Thalia Theater, Münchner Volkstheater, Staatstheater Hannover, Staatstheater Mainz, Theater Münster, working with director Ran Chai Bar-zvi. She has composed for the theater company The Agency, as well as for choreographers Julian Weber, Johanna Ackva, Dragana Bulut, and Ruben Reniers. Her work has been performed in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper, the Akademie der Künste, HAU 2 & HAU 3, KM28, Uferstudios, Dock11, and other spaces in Berlin, as well as Merkin Hall and Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, in California, and throughout Europe.

As a vocalist she performs contemporary, pop, classical, experimental, and microtonal music, and she is deeply involved in the American Sacred Harp tradition, or shape note singing. She has toured with the band Dear Reader and has collaborated and performed with Caterina Barbieri, appearing on her albums ‘Ecstatic Computations’ and ‘Fantas Variations.’ She has collaborated as a vocalist, arranger, and recording artist with Holly Herndon on her album ‘PROTO’, toured the album’s live shows, and worked with Herndon on subsequent projects ‘Deep Belief’ and ‘The Call’. She has sung microtonal works by Stine Janvin, Catherine Lamb, and Marc Sabat, and has recorded works by Laura Steenberge (Piriforms) and Abigail Toll (Matrices of Vision). She also performs works by others on piano, synthesizer, and live electronics.

Saylor received her BA in Music Composition from Pomona College in Southern California and her Master’s in Music Composition from the University of the Arts in Berlin (Universität der Künste Berlin). She is currently a freelance composer and musician in Berlin and teaches Electronic Music Composition at the Universität der Künste Berlin.