Kyle Bruckmann is an oboist and electronic musician who earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Masters degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath.
He has relocated to San Francisco from Chicago, where since 1996 he had been a fixture in the thriving local experimental music underground. While teaching and free-lancing extensively as a classical musician, he collaborated regularly with many of the city's most creative improvisers and sound artists, including
Jim Baker,
Fred Lonberg-Holm,
Jeb Bishop,
Michael Zerang,
Guillermo Gregorio,
Scott Rosenberg,
Bob Marsh, and
Olivia Block.
Ongoing affiliations include
EKG (3), an electroacoustic duo with
Ernst Karel, the experimental punk monstrosity
Lozenge, and his quintet Wrack, which performs compositions drawing equally from the traditions of contemporary jazz and the classical avant-garde. As a member of
Gene Coleman's Ensemble Noamnesia, he has performed works by
George Crumb,
John Cage,
Charles Ives,
Salvatore Sciarrino,
Otomo Yoshihide,
Werner Dafeldecker,
Cornelius Cardew, and
Malcolm Goldstein, among others.