Jeremiah Chiu

Los-Angeles based multi-media artist, synthesist, and composer Jeremiah Chiu creates work at the intersection of art, music, and technology, working with a vast array of analog, digital, and computer-based synthesizers, electronic instruments, and samplers. His current work focuses on infusing his electronic music compositions with organic textures and movement through live-processed performances, field recordings, and chance programming operations.

His musical expertise stems from his childhood experiences as a classical violinist and pianist — which evolved into his practice as a synthesist and composer. Chicago born and raised, he spent his time as an undergraduate (at DePaul University) and graduate (at University of Illinois at Chicago) student studying Graphic Design and Art, while performing and playing in Icy Demons, Chandeliers, and Axis:Sova, amongst his own solo projects — artists all operating out of the collective arts space and recording studio on Chicago’s South Side, Shape Shoppe. It was at Shape Shoppe that his musical vocabulary expanded. The collective space was home to many of Chicago’s free-jazz stalwarts (including Keefe Jackson and Nick Broste) and extended as a community space and recording studio to their artistic family — Mahjongg, Bitchin’ Bajas, Beirut, Man Man, Need New Body, Jeff Parker, Count Bass D, Natural Information Society, etc… The music of Icy Demons — helmed by Griffin Rodriguez and Man Man’s Chris Powell — brought together electronic, post-rock, and jazz elements, infused by a rotating cast of members including Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Dylan Ryan, and members of Chandeliers. It was through these formative years that Jeremiah developed his foundation as an electronic music composer — combining ideas from his art & design practice into his approach to music composition.

In 2014, Jeremiah moved to Los Angeles to refocus his practice as an electronic music composer and sound artist, where he currently composes and performs with a variety of like-minded collaborators including Celia Hollander, Booker Stardrum, Ben Babbitt, Dusting Wong, Takako Minekawa, Byron Westbrook, and Sam Prekop. His compositions span a variety of approaches, from more pop-oriented synthesizer scores to experimental compositions for installation environments. In 2018, the Getty Center commissioned his work, A Piano Cannot Play a Sine Wave, in part of their Pianographs performance. The piece is a graphic score for player piano composed visually onto the surface of the piano scroll. Simultaneously (in 2018), his feature-length collaborative score (with Marta Sofia Honer and Greg Herzenach) for the documentary film, 1 Billion Orgasms, soundtracked a quirky, yet dark portrait of an engineer’s pursuit of a strange personal dream. In 2021, Chiu composed, mixed and edited a two-channel sound installation / environmental music composition for the historic Neutra VDL House in Los Angeles. His upcoming score for a High Desert Test Sites — in collaboration with Celia Hollander and Byron Westbrook — sonically activates the three façades of Halsey Rodman’s Joshua Tree-based sculptural structure Gradually/We Became Aware/Of a Hum in part of their 2022 season of programming.

In early 2022 Chiu released a critically-acclaimed duo album with Marta Sofia Honer on International Anthem, Recordings from the Åland Islands, which combined field recordings with improvisations on synthesizer and viola. Across the second half of 2022, Chiu and Honer toured Europe and the UK performing songs from the album. In spring 2023, Chiu toured the United States opening for M83 on their Fantasy tour. In June of 2023, Chiu spent two days at Los Angeles’s Vintage Synthesizer Museum, sequencing their vast collection of synths without the use of MIDI, and recording improvisations to analog tape. In just four days Chiu created a new solo album, In Electric Time, to be released on International Anthem on September 29th, just three months after the first VSM session. In October 2023, Chiu tours the United States performing in support of Mary Lattimore.

Now Available

Recordings from the Åland Islands