Hugh Livingston

Hugh Livingston is a performer, composer and sound artist who creates site-specific immersive sound environments and performs exploratory cello music. Currently a 2017-18 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Livingston was a 2012 McKnight Foundation Fellow Composer in Residence in Minneapolis with the American Composers Forum, and is the recipient of numerous grants from such foundations as Rockefeller, Getty, Doris Duke, Andrew W. Mellon, Fleishhacker, Walter and Elise Haas, among others. He composes situational music in which he responds to spaces, landscapes, history and people, and has created public sound environments in gardens, museums, galleries and resonant spaces. Livingston describes his creative process as follows: “I listen to a place, record its sounds and then look for the empty spaces. I put the music in the gaps.” Based in Oakland, Livingston is sound artist in residence at the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Washington, DC; Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area; and the Gardens at Heather Farms.