Lori Goldston

Lori Goldston is an American cellist and composer. Accomplished in a wide variety of styles, including classical, world music, rock and free improvisation, she came to prominence as the touring cellist for Nirvana from 1993–1994 and appears on their live album MTV Unplugged in New York. She was a member of Earth, the Black Cat Orchestra, and Spectratone International, and also performs solo. Raised in the Long Island town of East Meadow, Goldston received training on cello, guitar, piano, and voice. Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

Lori Goldston is an American cellist and composer. Accomplished in a wide variety of styles, including classical, world music, rock and free improvisation, she came to prominence as the touring cellist for Nirvana from 1993–1994 and appears on their live album MTV Unplugged in New York. She was a member of Earth, the Black Cat Orchestra, and Spectratone International, and also performs solo. Raised in the Long Island town of East Meadow, Goldston received training on cello, guitar, piano, and voice. She studied cello with Aaron Shapinsky, and guitar with Bob Suppan and Joe Monk. At Bennington College, Goldston trained with Maxine Neuman, Milford Graves, Arthur Brooks, Vivian Fine, and Frank Baker. Goldston dropped out before attaining a degree and would later describe herself as “rigorously detrained". Goldston is known in large part for her improvisational work. Her work in cello is notable for a disorienting emphasis on pizzicato, which Goldston has said stemmed from attempts to play her cello like a guitar.[18] Goldston has been heavily influenced by Western classical music and folk tunes, citing the Folkways folk and ethnographic records as childhood touchstones and Arnold Schoenberg, Toru Takemitsu, John Cage, George Crumb, Olivier Messiaen, and Carl Maria von Weber as influences later in her life. Though not a jazz musician, Goldston has studied and listened to jazz extensively, particularly Eric Dolphy, Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Albert Ayler, and Pharoah Sanders. At the award ceremony for her 2012 Genius Award for Music, Goldston handed the orchestra written directions on how to follow her rather than sheet music, a move she traced back to Ornette Colman. The Stranger said that "listening to her was not entirely an earthbound experience [...] the music could only be described as a storm or flock of sound." Goldston draws on musical styles from around the world. She has performed as a member of the Seattle Turkish Music Ensemble and Seattle Chinese Orchestra, Volunteer Park Conservatory Orchestra, with Turkish Sufi singer Latif Bolat, Brazilian music with guitarist Marco De Carvalho, Japanese 20th-century and classical repertoire with Elizabeth Falconer, Klezmer music with Jack Falk, Lev Lieberman, Sandra Layman, Hank Bradley and Cathy Whitesides. Goldston has received awards and grants from 4Culture, Meet The Composer, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, and Seattle Arts Commission, King County Arts Commission, Allied Arts (as a member of the Run/Remain Ensemble), and was a 2010 City Artist for Seattle. Goldston was also the recipient of a Stranger Genius Award in 2012. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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…shrink me down again