Holcombe Waller is a singer, composer and performing artist. His main focus is interdisciplinary music performance. He employs themes of nostalgia, intimacy and the search for spiritual meaning to create music and performances that loosen the grip of ‘coping’ and ‘defensiveness’ used to gird oneself against the everyday backdrop of financial, environmental and public health issues.
Waller has self-released five albums on his own label, has created and toured four evening-length interdisciplinary music performances, and has recently premiered Requiem Mass: LGBT / Working Title, a monumental choral work that, in part, has sparked his new interest in community engagement and social practice within his work.
Waller was honored with a United States Artists Berresford Fellowship in Music, an award which noted his mournful, folk-inflected style as well as his approach to music “as total theater.” Waller is a two-time awardee of the Map Fund Project Grant as well as a 2012 Creative Capital grantee. He has been presented and commissioned by Under the Radar Festival at The New York Public Theater, On the Boards (Seattle), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), The Centre Pompidou (Paris), and many other festivals and theaters.
Waller’s collaboration with dance include the Joe Goode Performance Group of San Francisco, Zoe|Juniper of Seattle, and Miguel Gutierrez of New York. Waller’s collaboration with film include the feature-length score of the 2011 Sundance-premiered documentary, "We Were Here,” a documentary about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, as well as appearances in artist Ryan Trecartin’s “Sibling Topics” and upcoming film currently in production. Born and raised in the San Francisco area, Waller has B.A. in Art from Yale University, where he focused on video installation. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon, USA.