Lulu West is a NYC based performance artist, composer, improviser and educator. She is focused in heavy music that is deeply layered with vocal quivers, field recordings, interviews, and prepared guitar. Her music is guided by rural queer and trans histories building a sonic quilt that cares for its makers and viewers. Through transexualism, embodied memory, guttural outbursts, mental illness, and loss she looks to create experiences of communal healing. Lulu is specifically fascinated by how historical folk melodies and subtly prepared acoustic instruments can merge with the freakiness of harsh noise, hardcore, power electronics and experimental found-sound sampling. A natural product of this work has resulted in making performance art that physically challenges trans bodies. 

Lulu’s main collaborative projects at the moment consist of a folk/classical guitar duo project entitled Polsky West with collaborator Maya Polsky, a noise rock trio called Duchess, a metal band called MZZTR, and a free-improv trio with fellow sound artists astrid hubbard-flynn and Deven Carmichael.

Lulu’s contemporary compositional works have been performed by ensembles and individuals such as, The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, The International Contemporary Ensemble, The Akropolis Reed Quintet, Kinan Azmeh, Quartetto Indaco, The Playground Ensemble,  Russell Greenberg, The Neave Trio and others. Very importantly, Lulu’s main mentors and teachers in her sound related endeavors have been Meredith Monk, Wendy Eisenberg, Jon Deak, Anthony Cheung, Lu Wang, Erik DeLuca, Kristina Warren, Conrad Kehn and Eric Nathan.

Lulu is currently a lead teaching artist for the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program and Philharmonic Schools Program, as well as for Community-Word Project and Young Audiences New York (YANY). She is also a musician for the Musty Copeland Foundation’s Be Bold Program.

Lulu’s work is grounded in a web of collaborative experiences, being sonic foragers together who peel noises from the most peculiarly intimate of places. Entangling and provoking breath, destruction, yearning,  heaviness and transfiguration. Creating ritual with love and intention. All of Lulu’s work is grounded by an investment in long-term collaborative practices with fellow sound-makers and other forms of creative expression.