Marielle V. Jakobsons

Marielle V. Jakobsons (aka darwinsbitch) is a sound artist and violinist based in Oakland, California. She releases recordings on Digitalis, Aphonia, Mexican Summer, and Root Strata, and performs across the Americas & Europe. Focusing on experiences that are at once “natural” & technologically-altered, she also creates interactive audio for games and installations.

Receiving her MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College in 2006, where she studied improvisation, computer music, and electronics. Her thesis work Two Violins and a Theatre: A Triptych of Resonances is an immersive performance environment utilizing water, light, custom electronics and interactive computer programming to deconstruct the violin as a sonic interface. At the CCMIX in Paris, France, she studied computer music composition with Gerard Pape, Jean-Claude Risset, Trevor Wishart, and Curtis Roads. Marielle received her B.A. in Music Performance and Biology from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying contemporary piano performance with Anita Pontremoli and founding the Case New Music Ensemble. Prior, she studied classical violin with Yoko Moore, assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra.

She has been awarded NEXMAP Sounding Out California Composer’s Award, Elizabeth Mills Crawford Award in Composition, American Composers’s Forum Subito Grant, among other distinctions.

Marielle designs sounds and interactive music for video games and is an educator of sound arts, from children’s workshops to Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University. She also represents Keith McMillan Instruments as a violinist, demonstrating and premiering performances with the K-Bow Bluetooth sensor bow and other new technologies.