CHRISTINE SOUTHWORTH
Composer, multimedia artist & performer
Christine Southworth makes music and visual art shaped by close attention to the natural world. Honeybees, spider webs, living mushrooms, melting snowflakes, and moving water have become sources of sound, structure, and collaboration. Her work brings together acoustic and electronic instruments, robotic inventions, photography, and immersive video.
A co-founder of Ensemble Robot and longtime collaborator with composer and clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, she works across concert music, installations, film scores, paintings, and photography. Her projects often begin with an unexpected encounter and grow through experimentation with other musicians, artists, and scientists.
“But if I’m honest, my greatest mentor has been the natural world itself.”
Christine Southworth
BEES, MUSIC & CONNECTION
In 2007, Southworth received her first major commission from the Carlsbad Music Festival and Calder Quartet, shortly before learning that a close friend had died. A subsequent visit to his brother in New Zealand brought an unexpected introduction to beekeeping. She returned home fascinated by honeybees and became a beekeeper herself.
That experience shaped Honey Flyers, a string quartet that can be performed with Ensemble Robot’s Bot(i)Cello or recorded bee sounds. The Calder Quartet went on to perform it hundreds of times. The conversations with audiences afterward about bees, science, and music became as meaningful to her as the performances themselves. It remains one of her most cherished compositions.
INSIDE THE IMAGE
Arachnodrone / Spider’s Canvas, created with Evan Ziporyn, Isabelle Su, and Ian Hattwick, marked another turning point. At its Palais de Tokyo premiere in Paris, the four performers sat inside a projection cube, facing outward. Su navigated a digital spider web, Hattwick shaped and mixed the resulting sound, Ziporyn played electronic wind instrument, and Southworth played guitar with eBow: four musicians becoming the spider’s eight limbs.
That collaborative environment opened the way to subsequent multimedia projects, including Mushroom Modulations, Snowflake Sonifications, and NAMI. Developed with Jun Hoshino and Ziporyn, NAMI transforms Hoshino’s moving-water imagery into sound, joining sonification, live instruments, and layered projections. Snowflake Sonifications has received support from MAP Fund and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
RESIDENCIES & EDUCATION
Southworth’s residencies have included the Boston Museum of Science, Palais de Tokyo, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Trinity College at Oxford University, and Native Plant Trust’s Garden in the Woods. Her work has also appeared at the Venice Architecture Biennale and MIT Museum.
She holds a master’s degree in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University (2006) and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from MIT (2002). Her teaching and seminar work has included MIT, Harvard, Duke, Yale, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong Shenzhen.
CARING FOR THE LIVING WORLD
The encounters that guide Southworth’s art also shape her community work. After moving to Lexington, Massachusetts, she helped organize neighbors from Lexington, Bedford, and Burlington to oppose development of the Burlington Landlocked Forest, and created the coalition’s website. The effort brought together people concerned about the woods, wetlands, wildlife, and groundwater. Volunteers including the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA) have continued caring for trails and building boardwalks that help protect wetlands.
A chance meeting with a cat named Coco on a beach in St. Croix led her to volunteer as an escort for rescued cats, and eventually to co-found R.E.A.L. Cruzan Cats with Jill Cook in 2016. Through rescue, adoption, and trap-neuter-vaccinate-return, the organization brings volunteers together to care for the island’s cats. Across her art and volunteer work, curiosity becomes a reason to pay attention, make connections, and act.
In 2026, LexSeeHer recognized Southworth as part of its America’s 250th Anniversary cohort, honoring women’s contributions to Lexington and the wider world.