October 5, 1949 - April 17, 2026
The Department of Music and CNMAT mourn the loss of a great colleague and friend, Jay Cloidt. Jay served as Audio Engineer in the Department of Music and worked weekly at CNMAT from 2009 until his retirement in 2017. A multi-talented composer, sound designer, and audio engineer, Jay was a giving person who openly shared his experiences in life as well as his expertise in mixing emerging technologies with the creation of new music. Jay gave generously of his personal time to support CNMAT. I remember well the many hours he spent informally training our graduate composers, helping them understand both the how and the why of using digital and analog technologies in music making.
We will truly miss you, Jay.
Ed Campion
Thanks to Paul Dresher and Philippa Kelly for sharing this obituary that mentions the solo concert organized by CNMAT and the Department of Music to celebrate Jay's retirement at UC Berkeley. (Link to Jay's solo concert announcement at CNMAT, "The Music of Jay Cloidt".)
Obituary by Paul Dresher & Philippa Kelly
JAY CLOIDT: COMPOSER, SOUND DESIGNER, DEAREST OF FRIENDS
Jay Cloidt lived a life filled with music—the kind that makes you think, laugh, and feel its visceral impact. He left this world in his sleep early in the morning of April 17th, but his playful, resonant music will echo long after.
Jay’s musical journey began with a classical foundation. He earned his BA in piano performance from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and his adventurous spirit soon led him out west. In 1977, he worked with Veronica Aiken at the Upstairs Art Association in Oakland, and she says of this collaboration, “We were real rebels back then.”
Jay’s friend Mark Dalton recalls: “Some of the best adventures Jay and I had together were as members of the Isaac Scott Band, including backing up the fabulous Albert Collins at Seattle’s after-hours nightclub, Hibble and Hyde’s, where the action was just warming up at 2 a.m. Playing the San Francisco Blues Festival in Golden Gate Park in 1978 was another high point, with Jay leaving a blood-streaked keyboard on the festival’s grand piano.
Next up for Jay: Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. There, in 1981, he earned his MFA in Electronic Music and the Recording Media under mentors Robert Ashley and David Behrman.
For those lucky enough to be in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jay was a sonic hero. As a sound designer and live sound engineer, he first worked with Paul Dresher, and the two continued their collaboration and deep friendship until Jay’s death. Jay was the invisible hand behind countless powerful live performances, designing and mixing live sound and touring the world with renowned organizations such as the Kronos Quartet, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble. He won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for his work on the Paul Dresher Ensemble’s Slow Fire, and an Isadora Duncan Award for sound design on Rinde Eckert’s Dry Land Divine.
As a composer, Jay created music with a magical mix: technically sophisticated, yet brimming with warmth and humor. His commissions included works for Nancy Karp and Dancers, the Kronos Quartet, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Brenda Way/ODC Dance, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle called him “The Spike Jones of the Bay Area new music scene.” Jay’s music traveled the world, including the Venice Biennale, New Music America, and Lincoln Center.
Jay’s spirit lives on in his recordings, especially his solo CD Kole Kat Krush, released by Starkland. The All-Music Guide, giving this piece a 4-star review, called it “a wonderful, accessible, and yet challenging album from one of new music's brightest lights.” Stereophile agreed, giving it four stars and noting that Jay was “one of the few composers in the post-sampler era to fully develop that tool's fascinating and witty potential.” Composer Carl Stone praised the album for its “skill, wit, perversity, and adroitness.” Starting in 1999, for nearly a decade, Jay brought his playful genius to Leapfrog, creating sounds that sparked musical inventiveness in children.
Perhaps no night summed up Jay Cloidt better than October 20, 2017, at Berkeley’s Hertz Concert Hall with a retrospective concert celebrating the composer’s life in sound that also acknowledged Jay’s 8 years as the Audio Engineer for the UC Berkeley Music Department and the Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT). The audience heard everything from the majestic Sather Tower carillon to the tender intimacy of the Eco Ensemble String Quartet, from a solo piano piece to a hilarious and magical “duet for pianist and piano” with interactive electronics. And we heard the soaring, dramatic music from Jay’s theater work Darc: Woman on Fire, featuring a collaboration with Amanda Moody and Melissa Weaver to create a piece for singer and cello.
Jay Cloidt wasn’t just a composer and sound designer. He was a unique light, a dearly warm friend, and an acerbic wit who proved that music should always have a twinkle in its eye. He will be dearly missed, and we join his beloved wife Kathleen (who shares his unique blend of wit and compassion) in mourning him.
Jay also leaves behind his sister, Monica Vance, and nephew Matt Vance, both of Lincoln, Nebraska, and his Kennedy sisters-in-law and their children, all of whom treasured him. The final words for Jay’s fascinating, agile spirit can be left in the hands of one of his favorite bands, ABBA: "What a joy, what a life, what a chance!"
Paul Dresher & Philippa Kelly
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Ed Campion recounts a story about one of the many "freebie" recording sessions that Jay Cloidt gave to him over the years.
The Last Eddie, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley (2012)
In 2012, I was reprogramming the original NatSel Max patches and composing the solo piano part for what would become the final version of the Flow Debris Falls piano concerto. For many months, in the early mornings, I had been performing, testing, and programming the “ghost” improvising system in the main room at CNMAT. A day before the recording session for the Flow Debris Falls concerto, I arranged with Jay Cloidt, recording engineer for the Department of Music, to meet for an impromptu recording session.
For the premiere of Flow Debris Falls, Hertz Hall had a beautifully tuned grand piano, as well as a Yamaha loaner player piano brought in for the occasion. Jay was kind enough to come into the hall that evening and run the recording session. It was an incredibly fast session. I sat down at the piano, Jay quickly set up, said go, and I improvised from start to finish for twenty-four minutes with no cuts. This is the recording of that live, unedited performance called Last Eddie. The grand piano I played and the player piano were placed side by side. As the Flow Debris Falls concerto was still very much in my head, this improvisation became a massive cadenza based on the concerto.
Throughout that special recording session, Jay quietly carried out the invisible work of helping to make a recording that I personally treasure. Thank you, Jay Cloidt; it was just one of the many gifts you gave me.
The term “Eddies” dates back to one of my earliest professional works, A Treasured Collection of Eddies. At that time, I was exploring a set of invented personas—“The Eddies”—using my nickname as a playful point of departure for imagining a fictional, wavelike, cyborgian culture: a 21st-century Commedia dell’arte. By 2010, I had grown tired of the concept, and Jay’s recording of The Last Eddie became the end of an era for me. Jay Cloidt’s passing now gives me something to think about. It feels like the moment of the last “Jay”—a final, affectionate echo of his singular presence.
Ed Campion