West New York, NJ
Born 1943, Morganton, NC
For almost a decade, my work has focused on the Internet. This has changed it profoundly, and my concepts of who my listeners are, what they hear, and what the circumstances are in which they hear it, have all transformed.
Online since 1997, Cathedral is the first interactive site of music and art on the Web. Created with media artist and programmer Nora Farrell, it consists of three primary components: a website featuring a variety of interactive musical, artistic, and text-based experiences; a group of virtual instruments, including the PitchWeb, that allow listeners to participate actively and creatively; and an Internet band that gives live performances and offers listeners focused moments in which to come together and play music in community online.
Live Cathedral webcasts began in 1998 from the Spoleto Festival USA. In 2001, we produced a 48-hour online festival of Internet music that streamed 34 concerts live from 5 continents. During the following three years, the Cathedral Band gave live/online interactive performances from Australia and Japan, plus a number of locations in America, including The Cutting Room, La Mama, and the Winter Garden in New York. Our 2005 activities include the Worldwide Wireless PitchWeb Day, with performers on 4 continents playing for 12 continuous hours; the beginning of Cathedral Radio; and the Memory Theater, an iPod opera. Podcast in 49 playlists between April 10, 2005 and Feb. 24, 2007, the iPod opera is a retelling of the Cathedral story's five moments, through the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (as told by the Chronicler), based on the form of Monteverdi's l'Orfeo.
Visitors to the Cathedral site now total over 2 million, and its development is chronicled in my Virtual Music: How the Web Got Wired For Sound (Routledge, 2005).
Education: 1965-71 Composition studies with Ben Johnston, University of Illinois
2004 Writing on Water, live and prerecorded marimbas. Premiered by Mika Yoshida in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, NYC.
1997 Mysterious Numbers, chamber orchestra; recorded on Albany Records, Troy 342.
1988 Imaginary Dances, solo piano; recorded on Lovely Music, LCD 3051.
1984 Simple Songs About Sex and War, song cycle written with poet Hayden Carruth; recorded on Geisha Farm/Monroe Street, MSM 60105
1981 Southern Harmony, 20 pieces for 8-part chorus; recorded on Lovely Music, LCD 2033.
2005 Virtual Music: How the Web Got Wired for Sound. New York: Routledge.
2003 Perceptual and Structural Implications of "Virtual" Music on the Web, Annals of the New York Academy of Science.
1999 20/20: Twenty New Sounds of the Twentieth Century. New York: Schirmer Books.
1995 Talking Music. New York: Schirmer Books.
2007 Senior Fulbright Specialist Award in Information Technology
2006 Atlantic Center for the Arts, Master Artist, New Smyrna Beach, Florida
2001 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Internet Award for Cathedral
1988 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to write Talking Music
1984 Walter Hinrichsen Award, endowed by C.F.Peters Corporation
1983 National Endowment for the Arts Collaborative Fellowship to work with poet Hayden Carruth
1981 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to research experimental music notation
1977 National Endowment for the Arts Composer Fellowship to write The Time Curve Preludes
Cathedral website: http://cathedral.monroestreet.com
Electric Interview with William Duckworth: http://www.arts-electric.org/articles/040827.cathedral.html
| Year Awarded | 2002 |
| Category | Music-Sound |
The oldest instrument in the world meets the newest. William Barton,
