Composer and multi-instrumentalist CK Barlow divides her time between producing music for television, helping manage a music-publishing company, and improvising with electronics. 

As a composer/producer for media, CK has placements in more than 2,300 television episodes spanning nearly 400 series, along with several indie films, commercials and video games. Her specialties range from sleek EDM to gritty, exuberant indie rock. She has scored dozens of indie shorts and two independent features: Warrior Woman, starring Karen Young (Birdy, The Sopranos), and Roswell FM, starring Brendan Fehr (Roswell, CSI: Miami). CK’s work for media grew out of New Mexico’s renowned live theater and dance scene, where she created sound designs and scores for Tricklock Company, Theatre Grottesco, Working Classroom, and numerous choreographers.

Her solo performances turn field recordings into instruments, typically using different controllers for each new piece to complement the material. When improvising with others, she creates her instruments on the fly, using a custom iOS-based setup to live-sample and transform moments in real time. She has performed with Anthony Braxton, Malcolm Goldstein, and the late live-sampling guru JA Deane; held residencies at STEIM in Amsterdam; and performed for 13 years as the samplist in Deane’s acclaimed hybrid-orchestral conduction ensemble Out of Context. CK serves on the Board of Baltimore’s High Zero Collective, a foundation and presenter focused on experimental improvised music. 

She has taught private music-production lessons and college-level music technology since 2008, first at the University of New Mexico, then Montgomery College, Goucher College, and Towson University. Her writing has appeared in MIT’s Computer Music Journal, and she was interviewed by Melody Sumner Carnahan about her work for Leonardo Music Journal. Her fully online course for UNM, Arts Entrepreneurship, received QM® certification. 

CK received her BA in Technical Writing/Computer Science with a minor in Music Theory and Composition from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; and her MMus in Music Theory and Composition with distinction from UNM, where she studied with Chris Shultis, Richard Hermann and Patrice Repar.