Chris Campbell is a composer and producer.

From sit-down concerts to all-night festivals, his music has been performed and heard from New Zealand to Montserrat to the United Kingdom to the United States.  Praised as “heady”,  possessing “elements of post-Minimalism, avant-garde rock, jazz and global-fusion styles that mingle and merge with dreamlike mutability” (The New York Times) and “oscillating between the comforting and the exotic, with occasional creepy moments” (Time Out Chicago), Campbell’s compositions are profound meditations on sacred space,  ritual, and sonic texture.

Campbell’s current focus is musical macro and micro systems that combine in a modular fashion.  To realize these concepts he has collaborated with English instrument builder Tom Fox and other musical colleagues ranging from members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra, to Twin Cities band Aaron and the Sea, to violinist/composer extraordinaire Todd Reynolds and master drummer Dave King.   Newly invented drone instruments, and spatial compositions where indeterminacy rides alongside detailed passagework have been the latest results of this line of work, which Gramophone magazine calls “A surreal (or super-real?) vortex.  An astutely assembled montage that operates by setting up expectations it enjoys upsetting.”

Campbell licenses music to a wide variety of clients ranging from independent dance companies and indie films to large corporations including Disney and Google. In addition to his own music, he has had the opportunity to produce or work directly on the direction, promotion and distribution of over four hundred projects including two Grammy Award winners. Many of the projects have appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Newsweek, Gramophone, Downbeat, and USA Today.

From 2003 to 2005 Campbell began working at the innova recordings label. From 2005 to 2020 he ran the business, distribution and press side of the label as Operations Director. From 2020 to late 2024 he served as the artist facing Director of Recordings, leading the label in its focus on supporting artists who have been historically marginalized by western classical music institutions and systems. Durning his time at innova, the label’s catalog grew from 70 to over 700 albums, with each release encompassing different concepts and approaches to music making- somehow non-conformist, individualistic, and often groundbreaking. Awards for albums during this time included Pulitzer Prizes, Grammies and Emmies and major grants from the McKnight Foundation, the NEA, and others expanded the label’s growth, reputation, and visibililty.

For him, music continues to be a vehicle for community, for quiet, assertive communication, and for bold listening.