New York, NY
Born 1957, Los Angeles, California
I write music.
Many of my pieces are about the struggle to create beauty. An example of this is my piece The Passing Measures, for bass clarinet, amplified orchestra and women's voices, in which a single very consonant chord falls slowly over the course of forty minutes. That's it - that is the piece. Every aspect of the piece is on display, however - magnified, examined, amplified, prolonged. The soloist's notes are impossibly long, requiring frequent drop-outs for breath and for rest. The players are all instructed to play as quietly as possible, and then are amplified at high volume, in order to make their restraint an issue of the piece. Four percussionists scrape pieces of junk metal from start to finish, as if to accompany the consonance of the chords with sounds of dirt and decay. It's a kind of equilibrium between beauty and futility. I think about that a lot.
Since 1987 I have been co-founder and co-artistic director with my friends Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe of the music organization Bang on a Can. I am very happy about that.
1989 D.M.A.,Yale School of Music
1983 M.M.A.,Yale School of Music
1980 M.M., University of Iowa
1978 A.B. (honors), Stanford University
2002 The So-Called Laws of Nature, for So Percussion Group.
2002 The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, an opera for the Kronos Quartet with libretto by Mac Wellman and direction by Carey Perloff.
2001 Lost Objects, a staged oratorio for Concerto Koln, RIAS Kammerchor, DJ Spooky, Bang on a Can Lost Objects Ensemble, with libretto by Deborah Artman and co-composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe. Recorded on Teldec 8573-84107-2.
2001 Child, for Senteri selvaggi (Milan), Ensemble Alternance (Paris), Alter Ego (Rome) and Pearls Before Swine Experience (Stockholm). recorded on Cantaloupe CA 21013.
1999 The Carbon Copy Building, an opera with comic-strip artist Ben Katchor, Bob McGrath, Artistic Director , The Ridge Theater, and co-composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe.
1998 The Passing Measures, for Marty Ehrlich, bass clarinet, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and members of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Chorus; recorded on Cantaloupe CA 21003
1996 Grind to a Halt, for the San Francisco Symphony.
1995 Modern Painters, for Santa Fe Opera, with librettist Manuela Hoelterhoff and director, Francesca Zambello.
2000 (co-recipient), Obie Award for The Carbon Copy Building, collaboration with composers Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, comic-strip artist Ben Katchor, and Bob McGrath, Artistic Director, Ridge Theater.
1999 New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for music to choreographer Susan Marshall's The Most Dangerous Room in the House, performed at the Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.
1996 American Academy of Arts and Letters
1992 Kennedy Center/Friedheim Award
1990 BMW Music-Theater Prize (Munich)
1990 The Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome
1986 John SimonGuggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
1985 Revson Fellowship with the New York Philharmonic
