Biography of JoAnne jojo Maffia

Most recently, Ms. Maffia's mutli-discipline production, KINETIC FORTRESS 'a narrative interrupted', for performer, video and live music, premiered this February 2007 at The 78 Street Theatre Lab, New York City. In April 1994, JoAnne originally founded THAT! New Music Group, a collective of musicians and composers dedicated to the promotion and non-traditional presentation of contemporary chamber music. Ms. Maffia fought to challenge the conventions of the classical music world. THAT! Group incorporated staging, lighting and/or movement in the belief that theatrical elements would expand the range of sensibilities from sound into sight. The visual elements would only enhance the music helping to increase the familiarity of New Music often isolated within academia. The Group strove to make New Music accessible to a larger public. In 1996, THAT! New Music Group became THAT! New Arts Group. The slight change better represented the range of disciplines Ms. Maffia began producing, including her own work. THAT! Group became dedicated to promoting new works that explored the meshing of boundaries between mediums such as music and theatre, dance and theatre or visual art and performance, creating new areas of performance. In its four-year history, Ms. Maffia produced and presented the work of over 20 artists. The works of THAT! Group and JoAnne 'jojo' Maffia were performed at The Mulberry Street Theatre, Synchronicity Space, Accord Theatre, Next Stage Company, Collective Unconscious, Access Theatre Gallery, Context Studios, St. Peter's Church, Center Stage NY and the late One Dream Theatre. Artistically renewed by a return to graduate school (2000-2002), JoAnne has discovered new directions and creative interests completing a whole new body of mature works. On a bigger scale, THe jojo EXperiment premiered October 2003 at The Flux Factory with Ms. Maffia's multi-discipline work, MOSAIC MINDS: The Score in five movements. JoAnne has since focused on a series of smaller compositions employing new writing techniques heard recently at The Fusion Arts Museum, Collective Unconscious, The Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and McCarthy's Pub. April 22nd 2006, The Forecast Music Group performed Ms.Maffia's eclectic piece, Run On Sentence, for flute, piano, speaker and recorded sound at The Dorothy Jones Theatre at Singers Forum. JoAnne is currently on Faculty at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.