About

Bio

Marielle V. Jakobsons is a composer and intermedia artist based in Oakland, CA. Her compositions evoke minimalism with melodic drone and enveloping polyrhythmic soundscapes of synthesizers, strings, and voice.   She builds installations and instruments which bring focus to visceral experience of sound and light, most recently with her “Macro-Cymatic Visual Music Instrument.”   Marielle collaborates extensively in the experimental arts as a sound designer or composer for visual elements such as film, dance, or interactive media, and produces videos and photographs which have been exhibited nationally.   As a solo multi-instrumentalist, and with her bands “Date Palms“, “Myrmyr“, and other collaborations, she has published recordings and toured internationally on Thrill Jockey, Mexican Summer, Students of Decay, Digitalis, Important Records, among others. Her latest record “Star Core” is available now  at Thrill Jockey Records.  “Glass Canyon,” her second solo album of analog synthesizers and violin, was released by Students of Decay (2012), and hailed as “carrying the optimism of the natural and the breath-light touch of the beautiful” by Dusted Magazine. Her first solo records were released under the moniker “darwinsbitch” including the full-length record  “Ore“.  Recently, a new choral work “The Threads Beneath” was premiered by The International Orange Chorale of SF, and voted audience favorite from their spring season program.

Marielle received her BA from Case Western and the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied contemporary piano performance with Anita Pontremoli. Prior, she studied violin with Yoko Moore, assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra.   After CIM, she traveled to Paris, France to study towards a graduate certificate in computer music composition at the Center for Computer Composition of Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX). At Mills College, she was awarded her MFA in 2006, as well as the Elizabeth  Mills Crawford Award in Composition.  She has been awarded the Djerassi Artist Residency, Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, Brush Creek Foundation Arts Residency, American Composer’s Forum Grant, and NEXMAP Sounding Out California Composer’s Award.  Her installations, photographs, and videos have been exhibited or screened at the Staunton International Film Festival (VA), The LAB (CA), Warehouse 1-10 (NM), Indiana University East’s “Art + Science” Juried Exhibition (IN), Allegany Arts Council Juried Photography Exhibition (MD), Brand 44 Works on Paper Annual National Juried Exhibition (CA), and Madelife (CO). She has been a Visiting Professor at Mills College and San Francisco State University, and Visiting Artist at Eastern Washington University.

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Press

 
“The minutest vibrations are as expressive as the most sweeping gesture. [Star Core]’s mood exquisitely balances melancholy and hope” – Pitchfork

 

“The astral elegance of Alice Coltrane’s most sacred works and buttressing her compositions with sonorous Charlie Haden–like bass. The result is one of the best albums you’ll hear in 2016″  – Dave Segal, The Stranger
 

Put it all together, and you have a unified field of sound and vision.” – Dusted

 

“She blends synth, violin, flute and bass with her own whispered vocal passages for state of calm that dips into cosmic territory, bending drones into subtle shape… an absolute stunner.” – Raven Sings The Blues

 

“A meditative amalgam of grounding strings and mirage-like shimmers…” – The Fader

“…deeply moving and meditative synth and organic drones.” – Mojo

“What Marielle has replicated… is the exuberance of nature, the subtle, superabundance of the given thing itself.” – Tiny Mix Tapes 

Jakobsons shows herself to be an exceptionally skillful sound sculptor, someone who knows the value of patience and control and how to derive maximum impact from a restricted number of sound elements… As a result, the alien pulsations of the synthesizers and the neo-classical elegance of the bowed violin combine to produce an hypnotic result that’s both ethereal and earthy.”    – Textura 

 

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