About Clare Cooper
Photo Tania Kelley
“the kind of thrill-seeker the music world usually loses to the electric guitar”
- TIME OUT, CHICAGO
Clare Cooper (born Sydney 1981) is an Australian harpist currently based in Berlin. Over the past 12 years she has performed on pedal harp and guzheng in 17 countries as a soloist, bandleader and collaborator. Cooper’s compositions have been featured on Germany’s SWR, Australia’s ABC Radio and UK’s BBC Radio.
She’s ferocious with strings and sticks, her sound inspired by synthesisers and broken boomboxes. In 2007 she relocated to Berlin where she has been a founding member of several ensembles, most recently, the Splitter Orchestra – a 25 piece improvising ensemble. Cooper has also been a guest programmer and curator at ausland and Radialsystem V.
Aside from solo performance Clare’s key projects are Germ Studies (with pianist Chris Abrahams), LVSXY (with bassist Clayton Thomas), Nevers (with electronics musician Jean-Philippe Gross) and Hammeriver (with Tobias Delius, Christof Kurzmann, Clayton Thomas, Werner Dafeldecker, Chris Abrahams and Tony Buck). She is also a member of the John Butcher Group (UK), Kim Myhr’s Trondheim Jazz Orkester(Norway) and the Splinter Orchestra (Sydney).
With partner Clayton Thomas, Cooper founded and directed the concert series ‘If you like improvised music, we like you’ and ‘the NOW now festival of spontaneous music’ from 2001-2007, and also started Smack Bang, a live film soundtracks festival in Sydney in 2010.
She has collaborated with internationally acclaimed improvisers, pop and hip-hop groups, butoh dancers, animators and film makers. Her music has been described as “awe inspiring in it’s patience, quiet confidence and beauty” (REALTIME ARTS)