|
The following is an alphabetical listing of composer biographies for Galactic Voyager, hosted by Peter Grenader and airing July 1 on KCSN-FM, Los Angeles and streaming at www.kcsn.org
Scroll to the bottom of this page for a playlist of this program. |
||
|
Jon Appleton is a composer, author and the Arthur R Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. He has been on the faculty since 1967. Appleton was born in Hollywood, California in 1939 and was educated at Reed College, the University of Oregon and Columbia University. He is a founding member of both the International Confederation for Electroacoustic Music (CIME) and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). At Dartmouth College he serves as the Director of the graduate program in electroacoustic music which combines study in music, computer science and engineering. He is the author of books and articles concerning the relationship of music and technology including: 21st Century Musical Instruments: Hardware and Software (Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn, New York, 1989), “Science in the Service of Music; Music in the Service of Science,” Computer Music Journal, 1992. In 1993 he taught at the Theremin Center for Electro-Acoustic Music at the Moscow Conservatory of Music and in 1994 he was appointed a Fellow of the Dibner Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1995 and 1996 he was a Visiting Professor at Keio University (Mita) in Tokyo. Appleton has been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts and American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowships.
|
||
 |
|
Natasha Barrett began working seriously with electroacoustic composition during a master’s degree in analysis and electroacoustic composition, studying with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham (UK). This study also gave her the opportunity to work with BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) which has greatly influenced her current work, and lead on to a doctoral degree in composition supervised by Denis Smalley, awarded in 1998 at City University (London, UK). Both degrees were funded by the Humanities section of the British Academy. In the same year, a grant from Norges forskningsråd (The Research Council of Norway) enabled her to work as a resident composer at NoTAM (Norsk nettverk for Teknologi, Akustikk og Musikk / Norwegian network for Technology, Acoustics and Music) in Oslo (Norway).
Her work has received many awards, including the first prize at Musica Nova (Prague, Czech Republic, 2001), Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France, 1998), first prize (1998) and a mention (1995) in the Trivium section of the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France), Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo (IV CIMESP, Brazil, 2001), Concours Scrime (France, 2000), Festival Internacional de Nuevas Tecnologías, Arte y Comunicación Ciber@RT / Ciber@rt International Festival of New Technologies, Art and Communicaton (Spain, 2000), Concours Luigi Russolo (Italy, 1998, 1995) and Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria, 1998). She has received commissions from institutions and performers in Europe and America, and her work is available on numerous CD labels, including empreintes DIGITALes, Cultures électroniques/Mnémosyne Musique Média, and CDCM/Centaur. |
||
 |
|
Louis and Bebe Barron are two of the early pioneers in electro-acoustic music. They began their work together shortly after getting married in 1948, experimenting with musique concrete as well as electronic sources. In 1949, they established one of the earliest electroacoustic music studios in New York. It contained both disc and tape equipment, with various oscillators, mixers, and filters. Influenced by Norbert Weiner and his work in cybernetics, the Barrons created their own circuitry and recorded the results on tape. Their first fully-realized work was "Heavenly Menagerie" (1951-52).
During 1952 and 1953 the Barrons' studio was used by John Cage for the preparation of his first tape work "Williams Mix"; the studio also served as the focal point for Cage's Project of Music for Magnetic Tape which involved several other composers, including Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and David Tudor. The Barrons composed several film scores in the 1950s, including Ian Hugo's "Bells of Atlantis". In 1956 they composed the score for "Forbidden Planet"; it was the first electronic score for a commercial film and because of its wide dissemination it has had a considerable impact on the development of electronic music. In 1962, the Barrons moved to Los Angeles, where, although divorced in 1970, they continued to collaborate on compositional projects until Louis Barrons' death in 1989. Bebe Barron continues to be active in new music, and she was the first Secretary of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States from 1985 to 1987. |
||
 |
|
Tom Flaherty has received grants, prizes, awards, and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Music Center, the Pasadena Arts Council, the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities, the Delius Society, the University of Southern California, "Meet the Composer", and Yaddo. Published by Margun Music, Inc. and American Composers Editions, his music has been performed throughout Europe and North America, and is recorded on the Klavier, Bridge, SEAMUS, Capstone, and Advance labels. He earned degrees at Brandeis University, S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook, and the University of Southern California; his primary teachers in composition include Martin Boykan, Bülent Arel, Robert Linn, and Frederick Lesemann.A founding member of the Almont Ensemble, he is currently Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Electronic Studio at Pomona College and is an active cellist in the Los Angeles area.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Cynthia Fogg has been the instructor of viola at Pomona since 1998. A student of Dorothy DeLay, Fogg is a member of the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra and an active as a performer in the Southern California area. She received her undergraduate training at Sarah Lawrence College and holds a master's degree in violin and viola performance from the University of Southern California. She has taught privately and at the Pasadena Conservatory for many years. |
||
|
Tom Flaherty
|
 |
|
|
Cynthia Fogg
|
 |
|
Peter Grenader studied composition with an emphasis in electro acoustic music at the California Institute of the Arts under the guidance of Barry Schrader and Morton Subotnick.
In 2002, Grenader's Electrolux won the Periòdic Experimental Music Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Other performances include the 2003 SEAMUS National Conference, the University of North Texas, the California Institute of the Arts, Stony Brook University, Georgia State Univeristy, the Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival and broadcast on CKCU-FM, Ottawa, Canada, WOBC in Oberlin, Ohio and streaming on Resonance FM, London. Past palmares include the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, Holland and GMEB in Bourges, France as well as two wins at the Virginia Commonwealth University Music Festival. His film music includes Witches Brew, starring Lana Turner, Richard Benjamin and Terry Garr. |
||
 |
 |
|
Arthur Kreiger (b. 1945, New Haven, CT) holds degrees from The University of Connecticut and from Columba University. He studied composition with Mario Davidovsky, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Chou Wen-chung at Columbia and Charles Whittenberg, Hale Smith and Walter Ihrke at UCONN. Kreiger’s catalog contains pieces for orchestra, chorus, mixed chamber ensembles, solo instruments and the electronic medium.
His prodessional honors include the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. Kreiger’s music is published by C.F. Peters, The Association for the Promotion of New Music and American Composers Editions. His compositions are recorded on Odyssey, Spectrum, Finnadar, CRI, Neuma, Context and New World Records. Kreiger’s current project, a Koussevitzky Commission, is a work for the Minnesota-based Zeitgeirst Ensemble featuring violin, bass clarinet, paino, percussion and electronic tape. The composer and his wife live in Connectitcut on Moosup Pond. He presently teaches at Baruch College and at Connectitcut College. |
||
 |
|
A funny thing happened to Paul Lansky on the way to the computer. Originally expecting to be caught up in the search for "new sounds" and "unknown soundworlds" he instead became much more interested in human sounds and the noise of the world around us. Since the early 70s he has thus been using the computer as a kind of aural microscope on this world-noise. His "Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion", widely regarded as a landmark work in computer music, takes us on a journey to the inner world of poetry and speech. "Idle Chatter" and its sister pieces, "just_more_idle-chatter" and "Notjustmoreidlechatter", make music from the incoherent babble of synthesized speech. "As if, Values of Time, Stroll", and "Talkshow" all involve live performers in a kind of musical reality play. Recent works have made use of ambient noises such as those of shopping malls and highways, and he continues his explorations in search of the implicit music in the way people speak. His music has been widely heard and performed in the United States, Europe and Australia, and has been used extensively by dance troupes, including the well-known Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company. In 1989, "Idle Chatter" was used as the opener for the Zurich International Jazz Festival. Lansky was born in New York City and flirted with a career as a French horn player (Dorian Quintet 1966-67) before turning to composition. He is on the faculty at Princeton University.
|
||
 |
|
Elainie Lillios is an American composer whose music focuses on the essence of sound and suspension of time. Her music tries to convery different emotions and take listeners on "sonic journeys". The sounds she uses for her music are varied, sometimes they are simple things like the human voice, cars, wind chimes, or water. At other times her sound material is less obvious, like crunching bits of tree branches, walking through winter snow, or shuffling pebbles in a bit of water. She has been strongly influenced by French and British electroacoustic composers and believes that all sound
can be condsidered musical. Elainie is assistant professor of composition at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, holds degrees from University of North Texas, Northern Illinios University and the University of Birmingham, England. Mentors include Larry Austin, Jon Christopher Nelson and Jonty Harrison. She recently appeared as the invited composer at Rien a Voir XII (Montreal) and at the festival "I'espace du Son" (Brussels). Elainie recevied the 2002 ICMA Commission Award and won the 2002 La Muse en Circuit radiophonic competition. She serves as vice-president for membership of SEAMUS and participates on the CEC production team. |
||
 |
|
Olivier Messiaen has long been recognized as one of the most powerful and distinctive musical voices of the twentieth century. His music combines a fervent religious belief with a fascination for the passion and mystery of human love, all expressed through a unique compositional method - the musical transcription of birdsong, which Messiaen would carry out himself in the fields of France or the canyons of southwest America
Messiaen has exercised a remarkable influence over composers both in his native France and elsewhere, although his own work is unique in its individuality. Educated at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included the great French organist Marcel Dupré, he became principal organist of La Trinité in Paris after graduation in 1930, a position he retained for many years. Messiaen's musical language is derived from a number of varied sources, including Greek metrical rhythms, Hindu tradition, the serialism of Schoenberg, Debussy and bird-song, with his whole work and life deeply influenced by the spirit of Catholicism. . |
||
 |
|
James Mobberley has been on the composition faculty of the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1983, and is now Curators Professor of Music. He also serves as Coordinator of the Composition Programs, and Director of the Musica Nova Ensemble.
From 1991-1999 he was the Kansas City Symphony's first Composer-in-Residence. Other residencies include Composer-in-Residence for the newEar Ensemble (1999-2002), the Taiwan National Symphony, the Ft. Smith Symphony, the Composers Forum of the East at Bennington College, and many colleges and Universities throughout the U.S. He has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize Fellowship, a Composer's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2001 Van Cliburn Composers Invitational, the Lee Ettelson Composers Award, the Mrs. Ewing M. Kauffman Excellence in Teaching Award, and numerous others. Commissions have come from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Meet the Composer, the St. Louis Symphony Chamber Series, the Kansas City Symphony, and numerous individual performers. His music has received over 700 performances on five continents, and appears on the Capstone label, the Music from SEAMUS series, Gothic Records, the CDCM Series, and an all-orchestral CD performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra on Albany Records. |
||
 |
|
Barry Schrader's compositions for tape, dance, film, video, multimedia, live/electronic combinations, and real-time computer performance have been presented throughout the world. He has received recognition in the form of grants, awards, and commissions, from such organizations as the Groupe Musique Expérimentale de Bourges, Apple Computer, ASCAP, Yamaha, Meet the Composer, Los Angeles Film Forum, URBAN-15, The CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, Res Musica, Yellow Springs Institute and the Centre Internationale de Recherche Musicale.
His works have been featured in numerous festivals including the Australian International Electronic Music Festival, Festival d'Automne a Paris, Tokyo Gakugei University Exhibition of Electronic Music, New Music Los Angeles, Musiques Actuelles Nice Cote d'Azur, Darmstadt Festival, Synthese, the Almeida Festival, and the Biennale de Paris. Active in the promotion of electro-acoustic music, Schrader is a founder and the first president of SEAMUS. He has written for several publications including Groves Dictionary, Grolier's Encyclopedia and the Contemporary Music Review and author of the book Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music. He has been on the CalArts Composition faculty since 1971. His music is recorded on the Opus One, Laurel Record, CIRM and SEAMUS and Innova labels. |
||
 |
|
Chas Smith is a Los Angeles-based composer, performer, and instrument designer and builder who, in the spirit of Harry Partch, creates much of his music for his own exotic instruments. His compositions, which always display his dualistic fascination with the scientific and the sensual, might owe their split personalities to the diverse collection of composers he studied with in the 1970s: Morton Subotnick, Mel Powell, James Tenney, and Harold Budd.
As a performer, Smith regularly appears on feature film scores, playing both pedal steel guitar and his personally designed instruments. (He may be heard on such popular film scores as The Shawshank Redemption, The Horse Whisperer, and American Beauty.) Smith has also been featured on recordings by composer Harold Budd and with Rick Cox and film composer Thomas Newman in the experimental music ensemble Tokyo 77 (recorded on Intone Records). Smith has performed his own works at various new music festivals and art galleries. In addition to his two earlier CDs for Cold Blue, Nikko Wolverine and Aluminum Overcast, his music has been recorded on the Arc Light, Cold Blue, Cantil, MCA, and Straw Dog labels. Although Smith’s music is sometimes somewhat dissonant, the manner in which it presents itself is extremely engaging. As one critic put it when reviewing one of Smith’s earlier recordings: "If the house band on the Titanic sounded this gorgeous when the ship went down, you might have been tempted to stay aboard." |
||
 |
|
In the mid 1970's, Nyle Steiner set up a small Salt Lake City Utah based synthesizer company named Steiner-Parker. The company produced various analog synths as well as the original Steiner EVI from approximately 1975 to 1980. In 1980, Nyle won the Linz prize for his EVI and worked with Vladimir Ussachevsky on several pieces for the EVI.
Nyle is also an experienced trumpet player, having worked with the Utah Symphony in the 1960's. He doesn't play much acoustic trumpet these days. Instead, he devotes much of his time to developing the EVI and performing on recordings and soundtrack sessions some of the top names in the business. He has performed with artists such as Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, and many others. He has played on TV themes such as Knott's Landing and St. Elsewhere. Nyle has also played EVI on numerous movie soundtracks including Apocalypse Now, |
||
 |
|
American composer and performer. He studied composition with Michalsky at State University, Fullerton (BA, MA 1967) and later with Erickson, Partch, Gaburo and Oliveros (composition and electronic media) at the University of California, San Diego (1967--8, 1970--71).
He received two grants from the San Jose State University Foundation (1969 and 1974) for research into electronic music and in 1970 became professor of music and director of the electronic music studios at the university. In 1973 he attended Chowning's music seminar at Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Center. Strange is one of the leading authorities on analogue electronic music; his Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls (1972) is now a classic text. He also wrote Programming and Meta-Programming the Electro-Organism (1974), the operations manual for the Buchla Music Easel and has documented the 200 Series synthesizers made by Buchla. He co-founded two performance groups, Biome (1967--72), in order to make use of the EMS Synthi, and, with Buchla in 1974, the Electronic Weasel Ensemble. He was president of the International Computer Music Association (1993--8) and has appeared as a guest artist-lecturer throughout the world. With his wife, Patricia, they have recently published The Contemporary Violin: Extended Performance Techniques (U.C. Press, http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8987.html) . Strange composes for live electronic instrumental ensembles, for live and taped electronics with voices and acoustic instruments, and for the theatre; most of his works for acoustic instruments require extended performance techniques He is particularly interested in linear tuning systems (as in The Hairbreath Ring Screamers, 1969, and Second Book of Angels, 1979), spatia distribution of sound (Heart of Gold, 1982, and Velocity Studies, 1983), the isolation of timbre as a musical parameter, and composing for groups of like instruments or voices. Elements of vaudeville, rock-and-roll, country-and-western music, and the guitar techniques of Les Paul are found in his works. His theatre pieces employ various media including film, slides, and lighting effects; he produced a series of such works in collaboration with the playwright and director Robert Jenkins, of which the most important are Jack and the Beanstalk (1979) and The Ghost Hour (1981), an audio drama. In the mid-1980s, Strange became interested in alternate tuning systems. Strange lives on Bainbridge Island, Wa. pursuing a full-time career composing and concertizing with his wife. |
||
 |
|
Morton Subotnick is one of the United States' premier composers of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part, or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre.
The work which brought Subotnick celebrity was "Silver Apples of the Moon". Written in 1967 using the Buchla modular synthesizer (an electronic instrument built by Donald Buchla utilizing suggestions from Subotnick and Ramon Sender), this work contains synthesized tone colors striking for its day, and a control over pitch that many other contemporary electronic composers had relinquished. There is a rich counterpoint of gestures, in marked contrast to the simple surfaces of much contemporary electronic music. There are sections marked by very clear pulses, another unusual trait for its time; "Silver Apples of the Moon" was commissioned by Nonesuch Records, marking the first time an original large-scale composition had been created specifically for the disc medium -- a conscious acknowledgement that the home stereo system constituted a present-day form of chamber music. Subotnick wrote this piece (and subsequent record company commissions) in two parts to correspond to the two sides of an LP. The exciting, exotic timbres and the dance-inspiring rhythms caught the ear of the public -- the record was an American bestseller in the classical music category, an extremely unusual occurrence for any contemporary concert music at the time. In 1975, fulfilling another record company commission (this time, Odyssey), Subotnick composed "Until Spring", a work for solo synthesizer. In this work, changes in settings which Subotnick made in real time on the synthesizer were stored as control voltages on a separate tape, enabling him to duplicate any of his performance controls, and to subsequently modify them if he felt the desire to do so. While the use of control voltages was nothing new, it suggested to Subotnick a means to gain exact control over real-time electronic processing equipment. In addition to music in the electronic medium, Subotnick has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, theater and multimedia productions. His 'staged tone poem' "The Double Life of Amphibians", a collaboration with dirctor Lee Breuer and visual artist Irving Petlin, utilizing live interaction between singers, instrumentalists and computer, was premiered at the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles. Currently, Subotnick co-directs both the Composition program and the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology (CEAIT) at the California Institute of the Arts. He tours extensively throughout the US and Europe as a lecturer |
||
 |
|
Tugruvu (pronounced 'two groove you') was a project of Miles Richmond and Kostya Gavrilov in 1995 where Miles used to fall asleep playing a guitar plugged into an amp until he nearly killed himself. More recently, he is schlepping jingles to companies throughout America via Tuesday Productions.
Richmond is just finishing up his fourth CD with Komla Amoaku, a Master drummer from Ghana. It's a blend of African, hillbilly, opera, and hip hop all rolled up into one big flap jacket. |
||
 |
