bio

Clifton Ingram (he/they) is a Vermont-native and DC/formerly Boston-based composer​ and ​performer (Rested Field, guitar/electronics), whose music thrives on hiddenness. His writing aims to approach and retreat from itself along the fault lines of the musical and extra-musical, revolving around the delicate obstinance of obscured objects, the generation of aberrant mutations and self-devouring ornamentation, as well as obsessive canon-like structures.

Clifton has written for pianist-composer Andy Costello, pianist-composer Marti Epstein, clarinetist Chuck Furlong, cellist Byron Hogan, violinist Michelle Lie, cellist Stephen Marotto, vocalist Joshua Scheid, percussionist Matt Sharrock, Castle of our Skins, Del Sol String Quartet, Equilibrium Ensemble, Joint Venture Percussion Duo, Ludovico Ensemble,​ Music of Reality, Rested Field, Strange Trace, Tesla Quartet, and Transient Canvas. Clifton has been a fellow at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (2013) and was the Julius Eastman Fellow at Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (2020).

Clifton’s music has been released by Experimental Sound Studio (OSCILLATIONS 2016 Mixtape | Chicago IL), Dismissive Records (Four Instrumentals, 2015 | Denver CO), and New Focus Records (Right now, in a second, 2020 | New York, NY). His contributions can also be heard on Type Records (Khonnor, Handwriting | 2004) and Sundmagi (Who Cares How Long You Sink, Folk Forms Evaporate Big Sky | 2007). He has also contributed sound for film, including Paracusia (dir. Christopher Dreisbach, 2011). Clifton was a curator/presenter for Chicago experimental venue Brown Rice (2009-2012) and was a founding member of the Chicago Scratch Orchestra (2010). Clifton is also a freelance music writer, and his writings can often be found in the program booklets and liner notes of Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Since January 2024, he has been enjoying hosting an open mic night at Hellbender Brewery in Washington DC.

artist statement

Distracted, preoccupied, compulsively turning in on itself, visceral yet fragile — I think of my music as waking-dream, as a kind of atmosphere or landscape with an oneiric logic — dissipating when approached, eluding when questioned — a sonic weight that comes from a sense of hiddenness.

I’m interested in the lure of spaces haunted by their history. Often appearing in my work as a historical presence by way of canonic techniques, ornamentation, part-writing, manipulation of quotations, &c, I enjoy how an editorial approach to writing creates an obsessive film of dust or patina that complicates my own architectural choices. The composer-as-unreliable-narrator further complicated by the narrative-as-unreliable. Similarly, I am fond of creating notations that allow for labyrinthine ruptures in the linearity of music-making. I like how these fractures emphasize the social dynamics of making score-based music by fostering agency and creating a fluidity between independence and cooperation as performers navigate diverging paths. For me, this approach reveals something fundamental about the role of a composer: simply that scores are not music in the same way that recipes are not food. I like to create works that rely on an aversion to literalization in order to provide the reader/performer/listener with enough space to distinguish self from notions of authorial intent or privilege.

I approach score craft in a prescriptive way, underlining a gap between musical image and the somatic experience of sound-making. I want to make scores (unrealized music) that knowingly occupy a middle ground, exploring the difference between mapping (exploration) and tracing (replication). I think a lot about how modes of reading and writing are used to conceal and reveal lines of power. In this way, I create scores that lay in wait for performers to exploit a stressed infolding from one medium to the next — that is, music as translation from text to sound, a beauty afforded only by a kind of distance or proximity.

More recently, I have become invested in designing performance-installations for particular spaces or pieces of visual art. In these works, details of the audience’s presence are observed by performers as a means to encourage interaction/engagement, as well as to amplify a sense of surveillance and responsibility. Lately, I’ve found myself returning to my folk roots and performing as a singer-songwriter.