Morgan’s work as an experimental composer and performance artist has premiered at venues in the Los Angeles area, including Pacific Design Center, the wulf., the Standard Hotel, Human Resources, SPACE, and many pop-up galleries and house shows. Her career as an educator has inspired her to use learning as a compositional and performance process for both students and professional musicians. Some of her pieces transform visual elements into a map for creating sound (Nip Nick Notch), while others place classically trained musicians into game scenarios to create music (Cosimo's Stars). A common thread throughout Morgan's compositions is increased responsibility to the performers and audience in generating material (Meltwater Pulse, Reaches), giving a distinctive timestamp to each individual performance.

morgan lee gerstmar

is a Los Angeles based composer, performance artist, violist and educator from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in the Performer/Composer program from the California Institute of the Arts; a Bachelor of Arts in Neuroscience, Musical Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Southern California and precollege training from the New England Conservatory in Boston, MA.

Her piece Meltwater Pulse (2014) was premiered at CalArts and conducted by Christopher Rountree of wildUP. She has collaborated on installations with visual artists such as Lauren Dreier on her fashion debut in 2018, as well as with artists Carrie Schreck & Samuel Partal on the projects ’Til I Get it Right (2011) and Heliographae (2012). Morgan often works with the Isaura String Quartet–her first collaboration Lost Plate (2013) can be heard on the Fault Lines compilation released by PACK PROJECTS. In 2014 as part of her MFA thesis she unveiled a hyper-instrument called the "Lunola" which uses violin skills to create new soundscapes. The instrument responds to light in order to produce sounds, using alternating strips of black and white instead of bow hair, and sounds were programmed using ChucK and Arduino.