bio

25-word version

Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator, Suki O’Kane works with artists from a wide array of music, movement, expanded cinema and public art genres.

50-word version

Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator, Suki O’Kane works with artists from a wide array of music, movement, expanded cinema and public art genres. She is a student of monumental and durational forms, combining Jurassic electronics, everyday objects and found sounds to create noisy, hand held miniatures.

125-word version

Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator, Suki O’Kane works with artists from a wide array of music, movement, expanded cinema and public art genres. She is a student of monumental and durational forms, combining Jurassic electronics, everyday objects and found sounds to create noisy, hand held miniatures. She has composed for inkBoat and Theatre of Yugen, performs the compositions of Dan Plonsey, and is a member of Thingamajigs Performance Group with Edward Schocker, Keith Evans, and Dylan Bolles.

Complete version

Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator, Suki O’Kane works with artists from a wide array of music, movement, expanded cinema and public art genres. She is a student of monumental and durational forms, combining Jurassic electronics, everyday objects and found sounds to create noisy, hand held miniatures. She has composed for inkBoat and Theatre of Yugen, performs the compositions of Dan Plonsey, and is a member of Thingamajigs Performance Group with Edward Schocker, Keith Evans, and Dylan Bolles.

Suki has performed live and recorded with She Mob and its side projects: the mad folk duo Junior Showmanship  and its alter-ego speed metal Winner’s Bitch; in realizations of Jon Brumit’s Vendetta Retreat; with Lucio Menegon in his Split Lip, Soundtrack Instumentals and Strangelet projects; with Pamela Z and Christina McPhee in their intermedia work Carbon Song Cycle and with Dohee Lee in her multidisciplinary performance and installation piece Mago.

Her compositions for theater include three commissions for Theatre of Yugen with playwright Erik Ehn: Frankenstein (2003), The Cycle Plays (2007) and Cordelia (2011), part of Ehn’s Soulographie project. She teamed with Jason Ditzian to compose for Inkboat’s Line Between (2011), was a member of their 95 RITUALS (for Anna Halprin) project (2015) and composed for The Storm In My House (2018-2020).

Suki is developing new site-specific work for the Illuminated Corridor, a nomadic public art project that created streetscapes of live experimental music and performative projection in the Bay Area from 2002 to 2009, and has now set its sights on the historic Brooklyn – Clinton neighborhoods of Oakland (2024), West Marin (2027) and San Francisco (2030).

Suki’s work has been supported by the California Arts Council, the Creative Work Fund, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Oakland Stock and New Music USA.