After cutting her teeth on San Francisco’s underground music scene throughout the 1990s with photography, graphic/web design, and event promotion, Qzen commenced her DJ career as the decade closed. With a nod to the classics, she’s delved deep into the forefront of future music, allowing crowd reaction to direct — but not dictate — her selection.

In her nine years of experience, Qzen’s skills as a DJ have taken her to Canada and Mexico, as well as numerous cities in the US. In the early ’00s, she expanded her repertoire from her drum & bass roots to a hybrid of tech-house, electro, and techno, shirking genre to incorporate countless party-jams-waiting-to-be-played. In the years that followed, she’s begun to play an even greater variety of music, from spacey disco to the grimey end of dubstep — whatever suits the mood best!

Qzen spent many years investing in drum & bass culture with the female-run production collective Groundscore and their internationally recognized weekly, Eklektic. From 1997 to 2003, the ladies of Groundscore pushed the music far and wide: in addition to producing one of the longest-running drum & bass weeklies in San Francisco’s history, they orchestrated various one-off events — including a handful in Miami during the Winter Music Conference — featuring top headliners such as Kemistry & Storm, Andy C, and Grooverider, as well as favorites Fierce, Marcus Intalex, and Klute. The ladies put their heart into their work, and the vibe achieved is still talked about lovingly by those lucky enough to have experienced it.

2004 saw success with another project: The Invisibles, a live “electro-punk” band comprised of Alex Posell (a.k.a. producer/DJ Abstract) on drums/production, vocalist/keyboardist Kimi Recor, and Qzen on synth/backing vocals. After the release of the “BlahBlahBlah EP” on DJ Hell’s International Deejay Gigolo label, the group continued to receive great response to their live shows before geographic circumstances created their current hiatus. Also in 2004, Qzen’s vocal collaboration with techno producer John Tejada, entitled “Sweat (On the Walls),” was released on Poker Flat; the record ranked number one for two months straight in Germany’s Groove Magazine and continues to get play worldwide.

2005 saw the release of three more singles with Tejada: “Paranoia” & “Sucre,” available on his label Palette Recordings, and a remix of Christopher Just’s “Disco Dancer” on the aforementioned Gigolo. (“Paranoia” was called out as one of Pitchfork‘s Top Ten Techno tracks of the year.) Qzen launched a new party, Moxie, with partner Bryan James and in conjunction, a radio show, Moxie Musik, on WAR 93.7fm and westaddradio.com. She traveled to Europe to perform with Tejada and had the opportunity to rock the SF Love Parade on two floats, playing both drum & bass and tech-house.

In 2006, she appeared on Dirtybird Records as the voice on “Lullabye” by Claude VonStroke, available on his Beware of the Bird album. Since then, she’s changed her focus in a few ways, deciding to scale back on promoting parties after many years of event production, focus her DJing more on the techno/house end of dance music (although she’s still quite a multifaceted selector), and say goodbye to Moxie Musik after three years of weekly co-hosting. 2008 has seen the release of her first production work, as one of the 40 Thieves, for new disco label Permanent Vacation.

From 2005-2009, Qzen was the voice of the dance and electronic music sections of the iTunes Store, working as their sole dance/electronic music editor. In that position, she also curated events for Apple around the US. She left in April to focus on artistry full-time and is currently working on an album with the 40 Thieves as well as producing her own material and rustling up songs with other collaborators. She debuted a live set in June 2009 and is joyfully exploring the challenges of this new performance experience. It remains that one of best ways to catch her is live behind the decks, however. With her passion for deep, technical, versatile music and a natural talent for moving the audience, Qzen’s sets are not to be missed.