cello

Collaborating significantly over years with radicals, Dick Raaijmakers, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, she has also worked closely with Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and countless composers from the new generation.

She tours as solist extensively throughout the world having played for audiences from New York City to Mongolia and appears regularly in such festivals as the Biennale Di Venezia, Strasbourg Festival, Gulbenkian Festival Ars Musica, Holland Festival and for radios and televisions in Europe, Japan, and the United States. She premiered cello concerti dedicated to her by Per Norgaard, Dick Raaijmakers, Jonathan Harvey, James Tenney, Peter Nelson and gave the first performance of the cello concerto of William Jeths in 2000. She premiered the newly discovered concerto by Giacinto Scelsi in 2008.

She's collaborated with pianist Rolf Hind, classical pianist Alwin Bar, filmmakers Frank Scheffer and Frans Zwartjes, avantgarde guitarist Elliott Sharp, accordionist Pauline Oliveros, DJ Scanner, DJ Low, and Stephen Vitiello and video master Ferenc van Damme.

Her compositons can be heard on ECM records, Cryptogrammophone, JdKrecords, Seraphin, Etcetera, and BVHaast.

The University of California Press has commissioned a 60,000 word book from her on Contemporary Cello Techniques. A massive treatise on the state of the art of cello and performance techniques from the Kodaly Sonata until the present, it is now in the finishing stages.Her treatise New Frontiers, was also published in the Cambridge Companion to the Cello, Cambridge University Press and for Muzik Texte, Koln, and Arcana, the collected writings of composers edited by John Zorn.
She co-invented a Stringless Cello at CNMAT (UC Berkeley) with Adrian Freed and is now finishing an updated version at FabLab with Lex van den Broek and Johan van Kreij.
In addition, she has invented resonators that amplify the beats and subharmonics produced by two intervals played simultaneously. Giacinto Scelsi commissioned her to design and produce a resonator for his own works. ( http://uitti.blogspot.com/2009/06/scelsiuitti-resonators.html)
At present she is redesigning the upper and lower bows used in her TwoBow technique under tutelage of Andreas Grutter, master bow maker.

As a teacher, Frances-Marie Uitti has given lectures and master classes at practically all the major European conservatories (Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen, Royal Conservatorium Den Haag, Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam, Royal Conservatory Brussels, Santa Cecilia Roma, Hochschule fur Musik in Koln, Hochschule Basle etc) and many music schools in the USA (see added list). In 1997 she was named a Regents Professor at the University of California San Diego and again in 2007 at UC Berkeley. In 1998 she shared teaching with Anner Bijlsma and Ralph Kirschbaum at the International Cello Festival in Aarhus. In 1999 she was invited to Mills College to give lectures and masterclasses as well as teach contemporary techniques. For many summers, she has taught at the Dartington International Chamber music Festival as well as being professor of cello at Darmstadt International Summer Festival. In 2002-2003 she was invited as Guest Professor at Oberlin Conservatory teaching classical cello repertory and chamber music.
Ms Uitti has also given masterclasses at the Juilliard School of Music, Yale University, Northwestern University in 2003. She was invited for a Fromm Foundation residency at Harvard University in the season 2003/04.
She is often invited to sit on the juries for the International Symposium of Composers Meeting (ISCM Festival), Gaudeamus Competition for Composers, Gaudeamus Performers Competition, ICMC London.

She has traveled frequently to Bhutan and is founder of the Bhutan Music Foundation, a charitable non-profit setup to promote the music of Bhutan, the musical education of Bhutanese, and the preservation of Bhutanese indigenous music.

Recordings:
ECM records, Wergo, CRI, Mode, HatHut, Raretone, Cramps, JdKrecordings, BVHaast, Etcetera, Cryptogramophone.

Performances

Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | January 17, 2014