Christopher Tignor


Christopher Tignor is an American composer, musician, software engineer, and lecturer based in New York City. In addition to releasing music under his own name, he is a founding member of post-rock acts Slow Six and Wires Under Tension. Primarily a violinist, he has also composed and recorded string arrangements for notable acts including This Will Destroy You, John Congleton, Keith Kenniff, and Lymbyc Systym.

Early life and career

Tignor was born in Morristown, New Jersey. After moving to New York in 1998 he received a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from Bard College where he also studied electronic music under Richard Teitelbaum, with poet John Ashbery serving as his advisor. Tignor formed the band Slow Six in 2000, eventually expanding the act to eight members. In 2003 he received a Master of Science degree in computer science from New York University. He received a PhD in music composition from Princeton in 2018.
While living and studying in NYC Tignor worked as a bike messenger and assistant to LaMonte Young and Mariana Zazeela, in addition to running live sound and stage-managing for the club CBGB. He was sound engineer and then technical director for the New York New Music festival Music at the Anthology from 1999 to 2008, produced by Philip Glass.
Combining a cross-disciplinary facility for through-composed scores, live electro-acoustic performance, and software design, Tignor performs and lectures on his work internationally including at the 2017 SOU Festival in Tbilisi, Georgia, the 2018 International Computer Music Conference in Daegu, Korea, the Victor Hugo theater in Havana, Cuba, Carnegie's Zankel Hall in New York City, and numerous other venues over the last two decades. He has composed music for, performed alongside, and recorded with numerous eminent ensembles including The Knights, A Far Cry string orchestra, and Brooklyn Rider string quartet. As an interdisciplinary collaborator he has worked with contemporary dance troupes, video artists, and poets, including a collaboration with his former advisor John Ashbery.
As a result of his performance technique using tuning forks, Tignor is a sponsored artist of the German tuning fork maker Wittner. Likewise, audio software maker Antares sponsors Tignor for his application of Auto-Tune as a "chorale" violin harmonizer.
Tignor has worked as a software engineer for Google since 2011. He creates most of the software he uses for live performance, much available freely from his website.

Recorded work

In addition to his solo work, Tignor was the composer and bandleader for the groups Wires.Under.Tension and Slow Six.

Solo