Melanie Dyer
Melanie Dyer is a classically-trained violist who found freedom of artistic expression in creative improvisation and composition, visual art and poetry. Within these mediums she explores sonic language and possibility, and reflects and responds to the experiences of a Black woman moving through 20th and 21st c. zeitgeists.
Her music practice is jazz/creative improvisation and composition. She studied viola performance/symphonic repertoire with William Lincer, Lee Yeingst, John Jake Kella and Naomi Fellows and at the University of Denver’s LaMont School of Music. She has performed and recorded with many notable musicians, most recently the Sun Ra Arkestra under Marshall Allen, William Parker, Tomeka Reid, and others. She founded WeFreeStrings, an improvising string/rhythm collective in 2011 for which she has produced tours and two recordings, one indie, the other on the ESP-disk label. From 2004 – 2013, under the Bb Universe banner and in collaboration with the Scientific Soul Sessions collective, Melanie co-produced a series of underground salon events in her Harlem home. Bb Universe hosted music performances, rehearsals, community dialogues, recordings, lectures, one-act plays and films by artists/activists including Toaksin Ghosthorse, Robbie McCauley’s “Sally’s Rape,” and an open dialogues with grassroots activists. These events brought cultural luminaries, artists, eco-socialists, grassroots activists, working and under-employed people together for spirited performances and discussions.
Melanie is the recipient of NYSCA Support for Artists (2024), AFA Vision Artist (2023), Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize (2023), New Music USA (2018/ ’21), Chamber Music America (2019/’22), Jazz Road South Arts (2022), Foundation for Contemporary Arts/Emergency Grant (2022), American Composers Forum/Innova (2022), Her trio’s videotaped, livestream performance as part of the 2020 Chicago Jazz String Summit was chosen for exhibition in The Long Dream, Nov 7, 2020 – Jan 17, 2021 at the Museum of Contemporary Arts/Chicago.
Artist Support Program 2025 (with Gwendolyn Laster and J.R. Rhodes): Free Folk, sharing stories of the lives and works of women of color and an exploration bridging folk and improvisation through the lived experience of three African-American female musicians
