“exactly the kind of e ort that can guide our community toward sincere personal connection”
BIO
Praised for her “expert technical work” (The Strad), cellist Amanda Gookin "pushes Classical forward" (LA Times) and champions the future of music through the creation and bold performance of new works, and a dedication to education, culture, and community engagement.
Her initiative, Forward Music Project, commissions new multimedia works for solo cello that elevate stories of feminine empowerment through raw performances and educational initiatives. Since its inception in 2015, FMP has commissioned 18 new works by such composers as Pamela Z, Paola Prestini, Jessie Montgomery, Angélica Negrón, Jessica Meyer, Allison Loggins-Hull, Kamala Sankaram, and Nathalie Joachim. She has been presented by The Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), The Wallis (Los Angeles), National Sawdust (New York City), OK Electric (Tulsa, OK), Forbes Center (Harrisonburg, VA) Park Avenue Armory (New York City), and deDoelen (Rotterdam, NL). Her rst solo album, Forward Music Project 1.0, was praised as “the highest level of artistry” by The Whole Note and listed in The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020 by the New York Times. Her latest album, FMP 2.0: in this skin was released in November 2021.
Amanda was the founder and decade-long cellist of the contemporary improvising string quartet, PUBLIQuartet. PQ was the 2017/18 Quartet-In-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and recipient of the 2019 Chamber Music America Visionary Award. Amanda initiated PQ’s composer program, PUBLIQ Access, to commission works by emerging composers who significantly impact a new approach to writing for string quartet. In pursuit of socially conscious programming, her GRAMMY® nominated album with PUBLIQuartet, Freedom and Faith, addressed the resilience of the female spirit throughout history.
An advocate for new music, Amanda is a member of Contemporaneous, a New York-based chamber ensemble dedicated to performing and promoting contemporary music; and Nu Deco, a Miami-based ensemble presenting genre-bending music, art, and media collaborations in both traditional and alternative venues. She has performed with International Contemporary Ensemble, Wordless Music Orchestra, Shattered Glass, S.E.M. Ensemble, LA Dance Project, and Beth Morrison Projects as well as jazz and pop artists Sigur Rós, Macy Gray, Cory Henry, Billy Childs, Kimbra, Ben Folds, and James Carter.
Designing and leading courses on social leadership, music history, and improvisation, her work has reinvigorated the core curriculum at The New School College of Performing Arts and SUNY Purchase. Amanda is a sought-after public speaker on the intersections of activism and music and has made appearances on TEDxMidAtlantic, Houston Public Media, Second Inversion, and I Care If You Listen.
Fullling her strength and passion for activating change and innovation from both sides of the stage, she currently serves as Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York City and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival in Virginia.
She is the proud player of a cello made by David Wiebe in Woodstock, NY.
Forward Music Project 4.0: TRACING O’KEEFE
a new concert-length work by Pulitzer-finalist Leilehua Lanzilotti for cellist Amanda Gookin w/ live electronics.
In 1939, Georgia O’Keefe was invited by the Dole Pineapple Company to visit Hawaiʻi for three months to explore the landscape as part of a research trip geared towards creating advertisements. Through retracing O’Keefe’s steps on Maui in particular, the project rediscovers her visions of new landscapes.
Presentation and commissioning partners are being sought at this time for this exciting new piece.
FMP Reel
About Leilehua
Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti (b. 1983) is a Kanaka Maoli musician dedicated to the arts of our time. A "leading composer-performer" (The New York Times), Lanzilotti’s “conceptually potent” work is characterized by explorations of timbre and an interest in translating everyday sounds to concert instruments using nontraditional techniques. Her musical voice is grounded in experimental practices, both through influences as part of the network of musicians / artists in the Wandelweiser collective, and her own explorations into radical indigenous contemporaneity. “Lanzilotti’s score brings us together across the world in remembrance, through the commitment of shared sonic gestures.” (Cities & Health)
Lanzilotti was honored to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2022 for her string orchestra piece, with eyes the color of time, which the Pulitzer committee called, “a vibrant composition . . . that distinctly combines experimental string textures and episodes of melting lyricism.”
CONCERT PROGRAMS
FORWARD MUSIC PROJECT
Forward Music Project 1.0
Allison Loggins-Hull: Stolen for solo cello
Angélica Negrón: Las Desaparecidas for cello and fixed media
Morgan Krauss: memories lie dormant for vocalizing cellist
Amanda Feery: Stray Sods for cello and fixed media
Leila Adu-Gilmore: For Edna for cello and voice
Jessica Meyer: Swerve for cello and loop pedal
Forward Music Project 2.0
Alex Temple: Tactile for vocalizing cellist
Niloufar Nourbakhsh: Veiled for cello and electronics
Paola Prestini: To Tell A Story for cello and fixed media
Kamala Sankaram: Belly for cello and fixed media
Shelley Washington: Seething for cello and kick drum
Forward Music Project 3.0
Pamela Z: And and And for cello and fixed media
Camila Agosto: The Thinness Of for cello and fixed media Sarah Hennies: Tied for solo cello
inti ggis-vizueta: you are the water for solo cello
Seong Ae Kim: Break free for solo cello
Jessie Montgomery: Untitled for cello and fixed media
FMP Mix’n’Match
Tech Requirements For FMP presentations
For venues with little to no sound system/tech crew: Venues with no sound system or rental capabilities at all will be offered an all-acoustic program. Venues with a simple sound system or who can rent a small PA will need to have at least one sound engineer who needs to be on-site to assist.
For venues with a built-in sound system and no projector/screen: At least one sound engineer needs to be on-site to assist.
For venues with a built-in sound system and projector/screen: At least one sound engineer needs to be on-site to assist and one tech crew member to run the projections.
Tech riders will be provided in advance. For venues with little experience handling complex sound set-ups, it is ideal Amanda travels with her own sound engineer and/or projection artist at a cost to the presenter.
Other Programs
Recital #1
Leilehua Lanzilotti: Casalmaggiore for cello and xed media (2016/2020)
Liza Lim: Invisibility for solo cello (2009) - requires de-tune
Andrea Casarrubios: Seven (2020)
Ashley Fure: Wire & Wool, for solo cello and live electronics (2009)
Lisa Streich: Fleisch for solo cello (2017)
Kaija Saariaho: Petals for solo cello and electronics (1988)
Aiveen Gallagher: Trinity for solo cello (2022)
Recital #2
Leilehua Lanzilotti: ko‘u inoa for solo cello (2017)
Caroline Shaw: In manus tuas for solo cello (2009)
Osvaldo Golijov: Omaramor for solo cello (2001) - requires de-tune
Nina C. Young: Ainsi soit-il for solo cello (2016)
Gabriella Smith: Lost Coast (2019)
Sam Suggs: Postlude for solo cello (2013)
ARTS LEADERSHIP
In addition to her active performance life, Amanda is currently the Executive Director of the the MATA Festival in New York City and the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival in Harrisonburg, VA. Utilizing her strengths as a performer, activist, and administrator, she has dedicated myself to leading these organizations through equitable programming, collective community involvement, and event accessibility. Initiatives she helped facilitate include: a pay-what-you-can ticketing model, deeper relationship building with community members, conversations and action steps for organizational anti-racist work, the first LGBTQ+ pride event at Eastern Mennonite University, a new model of Artistic Director/Artist-In-Residence roles resulting in a collective leadership approach, increased individual giving through meaningful fundraising, and reinvigorated board leadership. Amanda is passionate about helping foster the next generation of true artist administrators, and can build programs and lectures on the following topics to help serve your student population.
CONVERSATION TOPICS AND WORKSHOPS
ARTS ADMINISTRATION
How to commission a new work
Grant writing
Running an ensemble
Fundraising
What is it like being an ED vs. an AD?
Working with a Board of Directors
Managing difficult relationships
ACTIVISM THROUGH MUSIC
Identity and composition
Social justice and equity work in music
Finding your purpose
Community building
ACCLAIM
PRESS
“Amanda Gookin pushes classical forward.”
– The Los Angeles Times
"Not only executed with stunning prowess, Gookin’s dedication to each composer’s voice channels the direct, hard-hitting messages of the compositions, her virtuosity powerfully propelling them even further...This is not an ego project. This is cello playing at its height; delivering art.”
– The WholeNote
“Gookin’s focus and ferocity—coupled with her expert technical work—made her message unforgettable.”
– The Strad
“communal joy embedded in a music of cooperation”
– The New York Times
“a premier example of feminist advocacy done right”
– I CARE IF YOU LISTEN
“exactly the kind of effort that can guide our community toward sincere personal connection”
– I CARE IF YOU LISTEN
"It is the highest level of artistry that can realize a message, a story or an emotion while seeming to have not performed it at all.”
– The WholeNote
“The performances clearly reflect Gookin's virtuosic command”
– Textura
“everything here exists on a level of glorious musicality”
– AnEarful
“Consistently self-possessed, and alternately delicate and fierce in her musical approach, Gookin displayed impressive reserves of emotional and technical energy.”
– San Francisco Classical Voice
AWARDS
2020 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music, and Theater
2019 GRAMMY® Nomination for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
2019 Chamber Music America Visionary Award
2017 Purchase College Faculty Achievement Recognition
2016 New Music USA Impact Fund
2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming 2013 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition Winner
FEATURES
TEDx MidAtlantic Talk and Performance
The Entrepreneurial Musician
Classical Classroom