Women Composing

a celebration through the centuries to the present


Zoë Keating (born 1972)

Zoë Keating was born in Guelph, Ontario, and began playing cello at the age of eight. She studied electronic music and composition at Sarah Lawrence College, after which she moved to San Francisco to pursue a career in information architecture and data analysis while moonlighting as a cellist in rock bands.

Zoë Keating eventually combined technology and music with an approach to composition and performance that involves live layering of her cello playing. While performing, she uses a foot controller attached to a MacBook Pro running Ableton Live, SooperLooper, MAX, and MidiPipe, patched together with some custom AppleScripts.

Here is a composition entitled Lost performed in a radio station in Sydney: