Cassia Streb is a  Los Angeles-based violist, improviser and composer. She is active in the field of contemporary and experimental music, performs regularly as a soloist and a chamber musician, and collaborates with a variety of artists from many disciplines. As a composer she has written for local ensembles such as the Isaura Quartet as well as her violin and viola duo, Story Water, and the Dog Star Orchestra. More recently she has been collaborating with Janie Geiser and John Eagle on an interdisciplinary sound and theatre piece called Sound House. Cassia has also worked with poet Mark Yackich in order to create a larger work for reader, orchestra and meditatiors and creative non-fiction writer, Stephen Osborne to create The Coincidence Problem, a work for choir and chamber ensemble where the audience is able to stream pre-recorded readings while walking through the installation in order to customize their own experience.

Cassia’s sound installations, with collaborator Thadeus Reed, have been featured in the New Town Arts festival, the Sea ‘n Space Showcase and the Memory Festival in Vancouver, Canada. With these installations, she uses analog electronics and recorded sounds to invite the audience to interact with the work by drawing them into the space without forcing their participation. Cassia collaborates with filmmakers, theater directors and choreographers in order to help them create music and sound design to compliment their works.

As a performer, she is a founding member of the Southland Ensemble, a contemporary chamber ensemble dedicated to the interpretation and performance of experimental music, as well as the Koan Quartet, a string quartet performing works by living composers. Cassia is also sought after as a soloist, particularly for her interpretation of modern scores and microtonal works, and she collaborates with many artists from the fields of electronic music, western classical instruments and other world music traditions. She has commissioned and performed a number of works by both established and emerging composers and she has worked closely with a range of artists including Christian Wolff, James Tenney, Michael Pisaro, Jurg Frey, Mark Trayle, Catherine Lamb and many others. Cassia holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Victoria and a Masters’ degree from the California Institute of the Arts. www.cassia-streb.com