ABOUT
"Tim Watson is the future". - Tom Lippincott
Tim Watson, 24, is a guitarist, producer, and composer based in Brooklyn, NYC. He has experience working professionally in a broad range of musical styes, including various strains of jazz, free improvisation, new music, indie pop, and Carnatic fusion.
Watson was based in Miami from 2017 to 2023. His career began in earnest at 21 when he began performing regularly with Cuban jazz legend Ignacio Berroa (described by Dizzy Gillespie as "the only Latin drummer in the world in the history of American music that intimately knows both worlds: his native Afro-Cuban music as well as Jazz") and bassist Armando Gola, a group dubbed the BGW trio. Since then, he became known as one of the busiest and most versatile guitarists in South Florida.
He has professional experience working with in groups lead by artists like Noah Preminger, Ignacio Berroa, Nazir Ebo, Brian Lynch, Cisco Swank, Emmanuel Micheal, and David Leon. He has also performed or recorded with Kweku Sumbry, Dayna Stephens, Alison Miller, Dave Chiverton, Jason Palmer, Tony Scherr, Shelly Berg, Nu Deco Ensemble, and Carmen Staaf, among others. An avid student of Carnatic rhythm, in 2022 Watson performed with leading South Indian classical artists Anantha R. Krishnan, Shree Sundarkumar, and Charumathi Raghuraman in Chennai, India on New Years Eve to close out the Madras music season.
His project Tim Watson's Hostile Architecture, a sextet inspired by South Indian classical rhythm, American minimalism, and 21st century electro-acoustic music just released their first single Adrenochrome Etude. Other current projects include 12eyes, JUNE ARC, The McModern, and Cost of Living. He is a member of Juvenoia, a NYC based fusion group led by Miguel Russell and Vittorio Stropoli. He recently collaborated with Dion Kerr on an ambient EP called Jems as well as his Dialogues series.
His recent large scale theatrical work BLACKPILL 2023 (~25') was inspired by fringe internet communities. It uses texts pulled from online forums to loosely illustrate how sites that were originally designed to be anime discussion forums ended up (in large part) creating both the blueprint for modern internet humor and the political movements that resulted in the Capitol riot on January 6th, 2021.
He recently completed a new piece for electric guitar and string quartet for JACK Quartet.
Watson has performed abroad in Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Suriname, Italy, and Costa Rica, and at many of the US's premier jazz venues, including the Blue Whale (LA), Nublu, Minton's Playhouse, the Black Cat (SF), Dizzy's at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Drom, Elsewhere, Bar Bayeux, Cafe Bohemia, and the North Beach Bandshell (Miami). His future pop ensemble JUNE ARC recently performed at III Points festival in Miami.
Watson has studied improvisation with John Hart, Ben Monder, Kris Davis, Brian Lynch, Tony Malaby, and Martin Bejerano. He has studied composition with Oren Boneh, Tania Leon (winner of the 2021 Pulitzer prize in music), Dorothy Hindman, and Juraj Kojs. He has studied South Indian rhythm and konnakol with two of today's premiere Carnatic percussionists, Anantha R. Krishnan and Shree Sundarkumar (Kanjiraman), as well as Cuban rhythmic independence with Dafnis Prieto.
He is heavily influenced by his experience working with Miami drummers like Dave Chiverton, Harvel Nakundi, Ludwig Afonso, and Ignacio Berroa. Watson has been informally studying sound design since age 12, and specializes in the VST Serum.
He has a BA in Studio Music and Jazz and a MA in Composition from University of Miami's Frost School of Music, where he was a Stamps Distinguished Ensemble Scholar. In his masters, Watson was a graduate teaching assistant and Henry Mancini Fellow in the jazz department at the Frost School of Music while completing a masters degree in classical composition.
Watson has taught students across the world, leading clinics with the Stamps Quintet at Berkeley High School, Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), the Conservatorio de Musica Pescara in Italy, in Suriname, South America, and with the Beantown Swing Orchestra, where he is a regular big band instructor.
He is fluent in Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Premiere. He also works in graphic design and typography.