“Sampling technology is used in a significant way for the first time. The music encircles reality, decomposes it into music and recomposes it until reality is no longer able to escape. Great music, that has something to do with life again” – DIE ZEIT

“As beautiful as the pastoral/celestial meditations of Brian Eno or Kitaro would be — if either one of those musicians chewed glass” – SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN

“Astonishingly, the music never seems artificial. The border between live improvisation and computerized manipulation blurs and is finally made irrelevant by the music which results” – JAZZTHETIK

“A gleeful savagery, with the droll wit of Satie’s piano pieces, the breathless silences of Japanese music, the collaged clutter of Stockhausen’s short-wave radio suites, and the political bite of Brecht/Weill songs” – KEYBOARD MAGAZINE

Bob Ostertag has been at the forefront of electronic music for nearly 50 years: improvising with synthesizers and samplers, creating new methods for composition, and inventing unique instruments. His work is known for its intensity – sonic, personal, political.

He first appeared on the music scene in 1978, playing a keyboard-less modular synthesizer in Europe with avant jazz pioneer Anthony Braxton, and in New York City sharing the stage with early punk bands at the legendary CBGBs club. His work over the subsequent decades covers more than 20 CDs, composition for the Kronos Quartet, improvisations with heavy metal star Mike Patton, punk cabaret with transgender icon Justin Vivian Bond, vocal ensembles, multimedia installations, solo performances, and more. Performing along the way at many of the world’s great concert halls and museums: Lincoln Center (New York), Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Strozzi Palace (Firenze), Hiroshima Museum of Art, Institute for Contemporary Art (London), the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and more.

Ostertag left music in the 1980s to devote his energies to the revolutionary movement in El Salvador. He eventually began writing about the war, and has not stopped writing since. He has published eight books on subjects ranging from dancing to climate change, migration, garbage, and yoga. His writing has won the “Most Censored Story of the Year” award from Project Censored and the “Most Important Book of the Year’’ designation from The Nation magazine.His social history of estrogen and testosterone has become a touchstone in the current debate about transgender medicine.

But his work is even more diverse than that. He was an original member of the media guerrilla group The Yes Men. He directed, edited and produced a feature film. He produces podcasts on poverty in the US and queer oral history, and works with Manos Amigues, an LGBT-run soup kitchen in Mexico City, and Kebaya, a shelter for victims of sexual violence in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Ostertag currently performs solo, duos with long-time collaborators, builds sound installations, and lectures on topics encompassing the full range of his many writings and endeavors.