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Aquarius
Biography
Zoë Keating (born February 2, 1972) is a Canadian-born cellist and composer based in San Francisco, California. She was born to her parents Chris and Clare Keating. She is the oldest of her two siblings, Christopher and Laura Keating.
Music career
Keating performed from 2002 to 2006 as second chair cellist in the cello rock band Rasputina. She is featured on Amanda Palmer's debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer.
In her solo performances and recordings Keating uses live electronic sampling and repetition in order to layer the sound of her cello, creating rhythmically dense musical structures. As of 29 October 2012, Keating uses Ableton Live and SooperLooper software along with Keith McMillen Instruments' SoftStep Foot Controller. Her self-produced album One Cello x 16: Natoma was four times #1 on the iTunes classical charts and "Into the Trees" spent 47 weeks on the Billboard classical chart, peaking at #7. She is the recipient of a 2009 Performing Arts grant from the Creative Capital Foundation.
Keating's songs have been featured in various commercials, TV shows, films, video games, and dance performances including CBS's Elementary, NBC's Crisis, So You Think You Can Dance, MTV's Teen Wolf, Dateline, Have You Heard from Johannesburg, The Day Carl Sandburg Died, Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, The Retrieval, and The Witness.
In January 2011, Keating won the award for Contemporary Classical Album from The 10th Annual Independent Music Awards.
In July 2011, Keating was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She performed at the closing ceremony of the forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 25, 2014.
On September 1, 2013 the LA Times published an Op-Ed she authored. It discussed the positive and negative effects of her iTunes revenue on her Do-It-Yourself performing career. Keating composed the score to A&E's The Returned with Jeff Russo. and in 2015 the pair composed music for season 2 of Manhattan on WGN.
Personal life
In 1972, Keating was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada to an English mother and an American father. She began playing the cello at the age of eight and attended Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Prior to 2005, she worked as an information architect. She worked on projects at the now defunct Perspecta, Inc and the Research Libraries Group (now part of OCLC) and the Database of Recorded American Music.
In March 2010, Keating announced via her website that she was expecting her first child with her husband, Jeff Rusch, in May. She gave birth to a son, Alex, on May 12, 2010.
Rusch was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in May 2014, and was admitted to the hospital for emergency treatment. Days later, Keating and Rusch received a letter denying coverage for this hospital stay by their insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross. After local media publicized the story, Anthem Blue Cross reversed its decision, telling Keating in a phone call that the hospital stay would be covered. Rusch died on February 19, 2015.