Seattle multi-instrumentalist and self-taught composer Jherek Bischoff launched his recording career playing support roles in various indie outfits before unveiling his own intricate chamber-pop statements on a 2006 solo debut.
Born in Sacramento, California, to an avant-garde musician who had studied with John Cage, Bischoff experienced a singular upbringing that included extended stretches aboard a vessel his parents navigated first along the Pacific Coast and later during a two-year voyage through Central America and the Caribbean. The family ultimately anchored on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where he mastered an array of woodwind, brass, and string instruments. In the early 2000s he gained notice through membership in experimental indie-pop groups such as Parenthetical Girls, Xiu Xiu, the Dead Science, and the Degenerate Art Ensemble, while also appearing in the solo band of former Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer.
Years of collaborative performance and composition emboldened him to issue his own work, resulting in the virtuosic, D.I.Y. album Jherek Bischoff, which Eleven Records released in 2006. He maintained ties to several of the ensembles already mentioned and simultaneously built a reputation as a versatile multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer, and arranger for projects by Holy Ghost Revival, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, YACHT, and People Get Ready.
For his more prominent second solo album, issued jointly by Brassland and the Leaf Label, Bischoff attained a richly orchestrated texture by capturing each participant separately and constructing the final blend on a laptop. The resulting 2012 release, Composed, earned widespread critical praise; its roster of guest vocalists, among them Caetano Veloso and David Byrne, helped shape a singular fusion of avant-garde classical, golden-age Hollywood scoring, old-timey jazz, and classic vocal pop that established Bischoff as a distinctive voice. That same year he issued an instrumental counterpart titled Scores and began receiving commissions from ensembles including the Kronos Quartet.
Although he continued contributing behind the scenes to other artists’ recordings, Bischoff surfaced in late 2015 with the holiday track “Surviving Christmas,” co-written with singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche and addressing the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East. The first half of 2016 brought two further sincere offerings—Strung Out in Heaven: A Bowie String Quartet Tribute and Purple Rain: A Prince String Quartet Tribute—both recorded with Amanda Palmer as homage to their recently departed heroes. Later that summer he delivered the successor to Composed; titled Cistern, the album took partial shape during sessions inside an empty two-million-gallon subterranean water tank and reflected impressions drawn from his sailboat childhood.
