By Jess McCabe | 11 December 2008, 10:58

Bonfire Madigan has announced a series of UK shows:

BONFIRE MADIGAN SHIVE is a visionary cellist, composer, vocalist, performing artist, community activist, and international touring musician from the United States. Shive has collaborated onstage and in studio with artists as diverse and influential as iconoclastic music producer Hal Willner (Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson), Joan Jeanrenaud (Kronos Quartet), David Coulter (The Black Rider, The Pogues), Kimya Dawson (Juno Soundtrack), Cat Power, Gossip, Fugazi, The Good, the Bad and the Queen, Jolie Holland, Slovenian industrial-music-theater artists Laibach, Finnish chamber-metal showmen Apocalyptica and Academy Award nominee Elliott Smith.

Shive’s songs have been included in the films Better Luck Tomorrow, But I’m a Cheerleader, and Chain Camera. Commissions include the original score composed and performed for the American Conservatory Theater’s 2008 production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, London’s Barbican Hall 2008 Twisted Christmas program, prepared solo cello suites for San Francisco Grace Cathedral’s 2006 Easter Vigil, as well as the score and starring role in the forthcoming experiMental silent film Transliminal Criminal.

She is a contributing author to the recently released anthology Live through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction (Seven Stories Press), sharing company with bell hooks, Nan Goldin, Kate Bornstein, and other creative pioneers. She is a founding collective member of The Icarus Project (theicarusproject.net), a grassroots support and media network led by people living with experiences commonly labeled “mental illness.”

Starting on cello at the age of nine, she began her composing career at fifteen in the Pacific Northwest riot grrrl scene releasing music with seminal independent record labels K and Kill Rock Stars. Shive has gone on to establish herself as a singular and trailblazing performer, blending folk, art, punk, classical and avant-baroque styles. Her albums include Sew True, …from the Burnpile, Saddle the Bridge, Plays for Change, and the recently reissued I Bleed: a Decade of Song; she is currently finishing her sixth full-length album, to be released in collaboration with her label, MoonPuss Music.

Photo by Steve Rhodes, shared under a Creative Commons license