Frances-Marie Uitti, composer/performer, pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello by transforming it for the first time into a polyphonic instrument capable of sustained chordal (two, three, and four-part) and intricate multivoiced writing. Using two bows in one hand, this invention permits contemporaneous cross accents, multiple timbres, contrasting 4-voiced dynamics, simultaneous legato/articulated playing, that her previous work with a curved bow couldn't attain.

György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Louis Andriessen, Jonathan Harvey, Richard Barrett, Sylvano Bussoti are among those who have used this technique in their works dedicated to her.
Collaborating significantly over years with radicals, Dick Raaijmakers, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, she has also worked closely with Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and countless composers from the new generation.

Frances -Marie Uitti tours as solist extensively throughout the world having played for audiences from New York City to Mongolia and appears regularly in such festivals as the Biennale Di Venezia, Strasbourg Festival, Gulbenkian Festival Ars Musica, Holland Festival and for radios and televisions in Europe, Japan, and the United States. She premeired cello concerti dedicated to her By Per Norgaard, Jonathan Harvey and will give the first performance of the cello concerto of William Jeths in 2000. Peter Nelson is writing a work for her with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Canadian composer Rodney Sharman is also composing a cello concerto for her.

She collaborates with pianist Rolf Hind, classical pianist Alwin Bar, filmmakers Frank Scheffer and Frans Zwaartjes, avantgarde guitarist Elliott Sharp, accordionist Pauline Oliveros, DJ Scanner, DJ Low, and Stephen Vitiello and video master Ferenc van Damme.
Her compositons can be heard on ECM records, Cryptogrammophone, JdKrecords, Seraphin, Etcetera, and BVHaast.

The University of California Press has commissioned a 60,000 word book from her on Contemporary Cello Techniques. A massive treatise on the state of the art of cello and performance techniques from the Kodaly Sonata until the present, it is now in the finishing stages.Her treatise New Frontiers, was also published in the Cambridge Companion to the Cello, Cambridge University Press and for Muzik Texte, Koln, and Arcana, the collected writings of composers edited by John Zorn.

Ms Uitti has collaborated with pianists Ursula Oppens and Robert Levin in classical repertory and with Rolf Hind and Yvar Mikhashoff in contemporary literature. She appeared in Frank Scheffer’s film on Elliott Carter with Ms Oppens. Also, she has worked with Irvine Arditti, Stefano Scodanibbio, Sasha Gavrilov, and members of the Ensemble Modern.

As a pedagogue, Frances-Marie Uitti has given lectures and master classes at practically all the major European conservatories (Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen, Royal Conservatorium Den Haag, Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam, Royal Conservatory Brussels, Santa Cecilia Roma, Hochschule fur Musik in Koln, Hochschule Basle etc) and many music schools in the USA (see added list). She has been ongoing Guest Professor at Rotterdam Conservatory. In 1997 she distinguished herself with a Regents Professor at the University of California San Diego. The following year she gave seminars at the University of California at Berkeley and at Stanford. In 1998 she shared teaching with Anner Bijlsma and Ralph Kirschbaum at the International Cello Festival in Aarhus. In 1999 she was invited to Mills College to give lectures and masterclasses as well as teach contemporary techniques. For many summers, she has taught at the Dartington International Chamber music Festival as well as being professor of cello at Darmstadt International Summer Festival. In 2002-2003 she was invited as Guest Professor at Oberlin Conservatory teaching classical cello repertory and chamber music.
Ms Uitti will also give masterclasses at The Juilliard School of Music, Yale University, Northwestern University in 2003. She has been invited for a Fromm Foundation residency at Harvard University in the season 2003/04.

Ms. Uitti is frequently invited to sit on the juries for the International Symposium of Composers Meeting (ISCM Festival), Gaudeamus Competition for Composers, Gaudeamus Performers Competition.

Recordings:

ECM records, Wergo, CRI, Mode, HatHut, Raretone, Cramps, JdKrecordings, BVHaast, Etcetera, Cryptogramophone.