Trey Gunn
For Trey Gunn, the merging of storytelling, visual imagery and music have always been the point of contact for his creative life. Photography, painting, language and film play together to reinforce and inspire the musical experience he has sought throughout his rich career.
A native Texan who now resides in Seattle, Gunn, began his musical life at the age of 7 playing piano. His interest in music grew through various instruments: electric bass, electric and acoustic guitar, keyboards, and the touch guitar. He completed a degree in classical music composition at the University of Oregon before moving to New York City where his professional life blossomed.
In 1992 he was asked to join David Sylvian and Robert Fripp in a collaborative project that toured throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. The band released "The First Day" and "Damage" – a live recording from the Royal Albert Hall in London – both on Virgin Records. During this period Gunn also found time to record his first solo album "One Thousand Years.” This recording began his work merging storytelling, dreamtime and music.
In 1994 he joined King Crimson – a group many contend as the most aggressively, adventurous rock band of all time. Over the next decade he participated in seventeen King Crimson CDs, two DVDs and hundreds of performances. For his role in this configuration of the group (Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp, Pat Mastelotto and Gunn), he helped evolve a new and unique instrument. This 'tapped' instrument, the Warr Guitar, is a 10-string touch guitar with the range of a piano. It can be heard, in depth, on his 7 solo recordings.
In addition to the powerful performances and recordings of The Trey Gunn Band, Gunn has toured and/or recorded with TOOL, Brian Eno, Maynard J. Keenan’s “Puscifer”, Vernon Reid, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Azam Ali, Michael Brook, The Farlanders, Matt Chamberlain, David Hykes of the Harmonic Choir and has spent nearly twenty years in diverse musical partnerships with Robert Fripp.
2004 saw Gunn fully step into the world of multi-dimensional art forms. He began working on a series of children’s stories set in Africa, a setting of Gregory Orr’s poem “Orpheus and Eurydice” and he and Joe Mendelson (Rise Robots Rise) gave birth to Quodia -- a new form of multi-media performance art. Quodia concerts -- that integrate live music, film, language and storytelling -- have continued to take Gunn deep into cultures far from his Texan roots: Russia, Norway, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and more.
Although Gunn began intensive scoring work for television in 1998 in between tours and recordings, it wasn’t until 2006 that his work in film began to coalesce. He has, since, music supervised for a feature about the independent music scene in Seattle, and Pavel Ruminov, a filmmaker known as the “new Kubrick of Russia” sought Gunn’s scoring expertise for his film “Dead Daughters”. He score for Sonya Lea's film "Every Beautiful Thing" (2015) won the Moondance Film Festival for "best score."
Gunn currently runs his own media label (7d Media) while dividing his time between solo work; his projects TU, KTU, The Security Project, 3Below and Quodia; film/tv scoring and coaching musicians in the creative process.