Amy Denio Music

Inducted into Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2015, Denio has been operating her own Spaciouser Spoot Studios since she was a teenager. She has produced over 40 CDs - solo, and with other musicians worldwide. She is also a polyglot, photographer and novice film maker, and is a trained Reiki master. Currently, she plays and tours with the Tiptons Sax Quartet and with Balkan gypsy core band Kultur Shock. She also collaborates regularly with Latin duo Correo Aereo in their fabulous group Ama Trio. She’s toured & collaborated with musicians from East & West Europe, North America, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, and Argentina. She's a founding member of The Entropics, Tone Dogs, Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet, Danubians (Hungary/Czech), Naked Slime Duo, Petunia, Quintetto alla Busara (Italian chamber & kitchen quintet), Ama Trio (Latin American/world) and her accordion quartet Hell’s Bellows! She was the guest vocalist for Curlew, George Cartwright, The Science Group: A Mere Coincidence (Stevan Tickmayer/Chris Cutler/Fred Frith/Bob Drake, etc), and on ‘The Gospel Record’ with Derek Bailey and Dennis Palmer. She’s been commissioned by Italian National Radio, the Berkeley Symphony, The New York Festival of Song, Relâche Ensemble, the Austrian chamber octet Die Knödel, choreographers Victoria Marks, Aiko Kinoshita, Li Chiao-Ping, Cheronne Wong and Carla Barragan, multi-media performance group Run/Remain Ensemble, UMO Ensemble, and choreographer actor/clown Lorenzo Pickle. She has produced 4 sound scores for Pat Graney Dance, and in 1997 she received the Bessie Award (NYC) for her soundtrack to David Dorfman Dance's “Sky Down.” In 2000 she composed "To Lie Tenderly" for Dorfman, which was programmed in the Next Wave 2000 Series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 2006 she performed for 40,000 people on New Year’s Eve in Naples, Italy. Denio's music was included in the John Cage Retrospective at the 1993 Biennale di Venezia. Her soundtrack for "Pangaea's Brood" by Thomas Edward helped the film win "Best Animated Film" at the 1997 New York Underground Film Festival. Their newest collaboration "Synchrony in Estrus" won "Strangest Film" in the 2002 Motion Arts Festival in California. She composed the soundtrack for Jamie Hook's feature film, "The Naked Proof," which received awards in Seattle and Minneapolis, and named 'Best Undistributed Film,' in the Village Voice 2003 Annual Critics' Poll. Though mainly self-taught, (her parents played jazz contrabass) Denio was sponsored by Jazz India to study voice in Bombay in 1997 with Dhanashree Pandit Rai. She has taught workshops on improvisation and composition at social centers, colleges and prisons in Europe and the US. In April, 2001, she was invited by Fred Frith to be Rosencranz Artist In Residence at Mills College in Oakland, California. In July/August 2004 she was a Fellow at Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy. In February, 2008, she received the Paul Goode Fellowship in Ireland, through Artist Trust. In December, 2009, she installed her musical interactive public ‘Sonic Bench’ at the Monorail Station at the Seattle Center, which was funded by Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and 4Culture. In 2010 she received a Meet the Composer Commission to create the live soundscore for 'Who's Hungry? (Santa Monica)', a toy theater puppet show weaving the stories of 5 'food-insecure' people, which premiered in Santa Monica, CA in January, 2012. She created the soundscore for Pat Graney's Bessie Award-nominated modern dance piece 'GIRL GODS' in 2015. world-class singer/multi-instrumentalist playing compositions (& improvisations!) that cross all borders