Sarah Hennies
{{Short description|American composer and percussionist}}
{{Infobox musical artist
| name = Sarah Hennies
| image =
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1979}}
|birth_place = Louisville, Kentucky
| origin = Ithaca, New York
| genre = {{hlist|Acoustic}}
| instruments = {{hlist|Percussion}}
| years_active = 1993–present
| label = {{hlist|Astral Spirits|New World}}
| website = https://www.sarah-hennies.com/
}}
Sarah Hennies (born 1979) is an American composer and percussionist. She is known for her work as an acoustic group composer. She also contributes to improvisation, film, and performance art.{{cite news |last1=Andor Brodeur |first1=Michael |title=22 for '22: Composers and performers to watch this year |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/01/22/2022-composers-up-and-coming/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=January 22, 2022}} She is currently a visiting assistant professor of music at Bard College.
Life and career
Hennies was born in 1979, in Louisville, Kentucky. She began playing drums when she was nine years old, and as a teenager she started playing drums with local college punk rock bands.{{Cite web |title=Queer Percussion |url=https://soundamerican.org/issues/alien/queer-percussion |access-date=2023-04-14 |website=Sound American |language=en}} She attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she studied under Stuart Saunders Smith, Herbert Brün, and William Moersch.{{cite web | url=https://toneglow.substack.com/p/0322-sarah-hennies | title=Tone Glow 032.2: Sarah Hennies | date=22 September 2020 }}{{cite web | url=http://www.editionmanifold.com/henniesbio.htm | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020903024019/http://www.editionmanifold.com/henniesbio.htm | archive-date=2002-09-03 | title=Edition manifold | nicholas hennies }} She then received a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied under Steven Schick. Later, she moved to Ithaca, New York.{{cite news |last1=Smith |first1=Steve |title=Sharing an Intimate Musical Vision |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/arts/music/sarah-hennies-composer.html |work=The New York Times |date=October 15, 2020}}{{cite news |last1=Saavedra |first1=Chloe |title=Composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies doesn't think you should assume things are simple |url=https://tomtommag.com/2018/03/composer-and-percussionist-sarah-hennies-doesnt-think-you-should-assume-things-are-simple/ |access-date=5 June 2022 |work=Tom Tom Magazine}}
After her graduation from UC San Diego, Hennies relocated to Austin, Texas, in 2003, and started collaborating with the guitarist Aaron Russell in the group Weird Weeds. In 2013, she founded her own record label, Weighter Recordings. Some of the musicians and ensembles with whom she has collaborated as a composer include Bearthoven, Bent Duo, Claire Chase, R. Andrew Lee, Talea Ensemble, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Two-Way Street, Nate Wooley, and Yarn/Wire. She is also a member of the music trio Meridian.{{cite news |title=Listen to Bent Duo featuring Sarah Hennies |url=https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/listen-to-bent-duo-unsettle-featuring-sarah-hennies |work=The Wire |issue=May 2018}}{{cite web |last1=Storring |first1=Nick |title=Sarah Hennies, Linguist in the Land of Noises |url=https://www.musicworks.ca/sarah-hennies-linguist-land-noises |website=MusicWorks Magazine |access-date=4 June 2022}}{{cite news |last1=Cardew |first1=Ben |title=Reservoir 1: Preservation |url=https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sarah-hennies-reservoir-1-preservation/ |work=Pitchfork |date=September 30, 2019}}
Hennies went through a gender transition in 2015 and much of her artwork reflects some aspects of her experience as a transgender woman. Her audio-visual work Contralto was premiered in 2017, featuring transfeminine identity issues{{cite news |last1=Dixon Evans |first1=Julia |title=Sarah Hennies' 'Contralto' Lets Women's Voices Be |url=https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2021/03/23/contralto-what-woman-sounds |work=kpbs |date=March 23, 2021}}{{cite news |last1=Tynes |first1=Jayde |title=Film exploring transgender women's voices makes debut in Halifax |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/contralto-film-transgender-women-voices-debut-halifax-1.4673644 |work=CBC News |date=May 25, 2018}} and was nominated for the Queer|Art Prize in 2019.{{cite web |title=2019 RECENT WORK FINALISTS |url=https://www.queer-art.org/prize-2019 |website=Queer-Art |access-date=2 June 2022}}
Awards
Hennies is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts (2016), the Grants to Artists Award (2019) from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.,{{cite news |last1=Selvin |first1=Claire |title=Foundation for Contemporary Arts Names 2019 Grants to Artists, Including Tania Bruguera, Trisha Donnelly |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/foundation-contemporary-arts-names-2019-grants-artists-including-tania-bruguera-trisha-donnelly-11734/ |work=ART news |date=January 23, 2019}} and a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship.{{cite news |title=United States Artists announces 2024 USA Fellows |url=https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/united-states-artists-announces-2024-usa-fellows |work=Philanthropy News Digest |date=January 24, 2024}} In 2022, she was one of 14 American composers to receive a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University.{{Cite web |title=The Fromm Music Foundation Announces 2022 Commission Recipients, Prize Winners, and Project Grant Recipients |url=https://frommfoundation.fas.harvard.edu/news/fromm-music-foundation-announces-2022-commission-recipients-prize-winners-and-project |access-date=2023-04-14 |website=frommfoundation.fas.harvard.edu |date=14 March 2023 |language=en}}
Works
=Singles, extended plays and albums=
| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center;"
! scope="col" style="width:12em;"| Title ! scope="col" style="width:18em;"| Details |
| scope="row" | Flourish
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|---|
| scope="row" | Clots
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| scope="row" | Work
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| scope="row" | Everything Else{{cite news |last1=Thomas |first1=Nathan |title=Sarah Hennies – Everything Else |url=https://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2016/11/sarah-hennies-everything-else/ |access-date=6 June 2022 |work=Fluid Radio}}
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| scope="row" | Gather & Release{{cite news |last1=Storring |first1=Nick |title=Sarah Hennies. Gather & Release. |url=https://www.musicworks.ca/reviews/recordings/sarah-hennies-gather-release |access-date=6 June 2022 |work=MusicWorks}}
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| scope="row" | Reservoir 1: Preservation (with Philip Bush & Meridian)
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| scope="row" | The Reinvention of Romance{{cite news |last1=Williger |first1=Jonathan |title=The Reinvention of Romance- Sarah Hennies |url=https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sarah-hennies-the-reinvention-of-romance/ |work=Pitchfork |date=September 25, 2020}}
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| scope="row" | Extra Time
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| scope="row" | Spectral Malsconcities (with Bearthoven & Bent Duo)
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| scope="row" | Bodies of Water
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| scope="row" | Motor Tapes
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=Films=
- Contralto (2017) — a multimedia documentary exploring transfeminism{{cite news |title=Sarah Hennies: Getting at the Heart of a Sound |url=https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/sarah-hennies-getting-at-the-heart-of-a-sound/ |access-date=6 June 2022 |work=NewMusic}}
References
{{Reflist}}
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Category:21st-century American composers
Category:American women composers
Category:American LGBTQ composers
Category:Transgender women musicians
Category:LGBTQ people from Kentucky
Category:Transgender academics
Category:Musicians from Louisville, Kentucky
Category:Musicians from Ithaca, New York
Category:University of California, San Diego alumni
Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni