Bill Alves has written extensively for acoustic and electronic instruments as well as mixed media, including the integration of music and computer video, robot choreography, and web art. His works have been presented at many festivals, radio and television shows, and other venues in the USA, Europe, and Asia. A CD of his computer music, The Terrain of Possibilities is available on the EMF label, and works of his are included on other recordings, including tuning@eartha.mills.edu and ICMC 1999. In 1993-94 he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellow in Indonesia, a culture whose music has especially influenced his writing. He currently teaches at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, where his courses include Computer Music, World Music, and The Harmony of Sound and Light.
Lydia Ayers, currently an Assistant Lecturer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, chaired the 1996 International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong. She has also been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She uses algorithms to solve tuning and compositional problems, and is creating Chinese computer instrument designs. She composes computer music with unlimited just intonation and with a 75-tone Indian/Partch scale on the "Woodstock Gamelan," a tubular percussion instrument built to her specifications by Woodstock Percussion. She has extensively researched the Partch, Indian, Indonesian and Arabic microtonal systems as well as more experimental tunings, has given workshops in microtonal music and has worked with extended vocal and woodwind techniques, including quarter tones, multiphonics, buzz tones and other unusual flute timbres.
Donald Bousted trained as a composer at the Royal College of Music where he won the Cobbett Prize for Composition in 1982. His music has been widely played in Europe and broadcast in several countries. He is a co-author of 'The Quarter-Tone Recorder Manual' which is published by Moeck. He is a lecturer in composition at the University of Huddersfield in the UK where he has recently submitted his PhD thesis which is, in part, concerned with the development of microtonal music for recorder. He is Artistic Director of Ensemble QTR who have been described as 'the UK's most exciting microtonal ensemble.'
Bruce Brode has played keyboards and horns in a number of jazz and blues ensembles.
Warren Burt attended the State University of New York, Albany (BA, 1971) and the University of California, San Diego (MA, 1975) before moving to Australia in 1975. In Australia he has worked in academia (La Trobe University, NSW Conservatorium, Victorian College of the Arts, Australian National University), education, and radio (freelance and commissioned productions for ABC and PBAA), and as a composer, film maker, video artist, and community arts organizer. His works have been performed and shown in the USA, Australia, Europe and Japan and he has had grants from the Australia Council, the Victorian Ministry for the Arts and the McKnight Foundation (USA), and has been artist in residence with a number of organizations, such as the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization, the Los Angeles based art-science think-tank International Synergy, the Broadcast Music Department of ABC Radio, the Monash University Music Department, the RMIT Department of Fine Arts, and the American Composers Forum. His work with electronic and computer music is recognized internationally, including 1989 performances at Ars Electronica, Linz; and Steirischer Herbst, Graz; and 1994-95 performances and installations in New Zealand, Australia, the USA, and Germany. His book, Writings from a Scarlet Aardvark, 15 Articles on Music and Art, 1981-93, was published in 1993 by Frog Peak Music, USA. A second book, Critical Vices: The Myths of Post-Modern Theory, written in collaboration with Nicholas Zurbrugg, was published in 1999 by Gordon and Breach, New York. Recent CD releases of his work include 39 Dissonant Etudes (Tall Poppies, Sydney, 1996), and Recitative-Tracing: On Guns and Cock-Fighting (on Winded, Innova, St. Paul, 1998). His electronic composition La Strega Bianca della Luna II was selected for inclusion in the 1999 Sonic Circuits International Electronic Music Festival. In 1998 he was an artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Artists Program, California, and he was awarded a 1998-2000 Australia Council Composer's Fellowship. Currently, he is a freelance composer, and has recently founded the Centre for Studies in Experimental Music and Performance, a non-academic institution organizing classes, lectures and performances. From January - May 2001, he is Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
David Canright is a mathematics professor and self-taught musician. He first became interested in just intonation through a copy of Lou Harrison's Music Primer, and later through Genesis of a Music by Harry Partch. He dabbles with guitars, refretted to just intonation.
Amanda Cole was born in Australia in 1979. She completed her Bachelor of Music (honors) degree at the Sydney Conservatorium in 2000. Whilst studying at the Conservatorium, Amanda developed a keen interest in alternate tunings, particularly Just Intonation. She has studied Just Intonation with Dr. Greg Schiemer and intends to pursue further research into the area in the future. Amanda wrote her thesis on Harry Partch's Just Intonation. Amanda had her piece Euphony for mixed ensemble performed at the Sydney Opera House, wrote the music for the Prompt Theatre production If Only I Could Bare to Be Alone and has written music for the ABC TV program Headstart (To be aired in 2001). Amanda's future aim is to write more music in Just Intonation tuning.
Christopher Dobrian is Associate Professor of Music at the University of California, Irvine, where he teaches composition and computer music and directs the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio. Previously he was acting director of the iEAR Studios and the graduate MFA program at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and executive producer of the Electronic Arts Performance Series. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, where he studied composition with Joji Yuasa, Robert Erickson, Morton Feldman, and Bernard Rands, and computer music with F. Richard Moore and George Lewis. He is vice president of the Electronic Music Foundation, a non-profit organization for the preservation and distribution of electronic music, and is the author of the technical documentation and tutorials for the Max and MSP programming environments by Cycling '74. His work in computer music focuses on the development of "artificially intelligent" systems for composition, improvisation, and cognition.
David B. Doty (born 1950) is a primarily self-taught composer, theorist, and synthesist. He is a leading authority on Just Intonation, having composed exclusively in just tunings for over twenty-five years, and is the author of The Just Intonation Primer (1993, '94). He began building instruments and composing in 1970, inspired, in part, by the work of the late Harry Partch. He cofounded the San Francisco-based experimental music ensemble Other Music (1975-1983) and helped to design and build the group's justly tuned American gamelan. Since 1984, Doty has composed for MIDI instruments; a selection of his works for this medium are featured on his 1998 CD Uncommon Practice. He is a founder of the Just Intonation Network and the editor of the network's journal, 1/1.
Mary Dropkin received her Bachelor of Music degree and Master of Music degree in Harp Performance from the University of Southern California. She is currently the principal harpist with the Burbank/West Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Redlands Symphony, the Riverside County Philharmonic, the San Bernardino Symphony, and the Indian Wells-Desert Symphony. In addition to her orchestral responsibilities, she is quite active as a freelance musician and a chamber musician. Her trio, Entr'amis was one of five finalists in a recent American Harp Society's Concert Artists Competition. She is on the faculty at Pomona College, the University of Redlands Community School of Music and the Arts and Arrowbear Music Camp, in addition to maintaining a large teaching studio in her home.
Dudley Duncan CV in music:
b. 1921, Nocona TX
Ph.D. 1949, sociology
Occupation: professor of sociology (retired 1987), research and teaching, primarily on social statistics and quantitative sociology, 1948-87.
Composing:
1937-40, chamber music pieces
1969-72, musique concréte
1984-95, computer/synthesizer pieces, in just intonation after c. 1985
Music published or recorded commercially:
"Cosmic Koto" (honorable mention, Stereo Review tape recorder music competition), Experimental Musical Instruments -- Early Years CD Exp0015.
"Threnody" in Rational Music for an Irrational World, cassette tape, Just Intonation Network.
"Euphorics for Flute" score printed in Flute Talk, September 1992.
Writing:
Articles and reviews in 1/1, Ars Musica Denver, Sociological Theory, and Contemporary Sociology on tuning theory, just intonation, and the work of Harry Partch and David Doty.
Robert Miller Foulkrod was born in State College, PA. He received his B.S.M.E. from the University of New Hampshire in 1961. At Sanders Associates, Inc., he conceived and produced their first computerized, clinical data terminal for the Permanente Medical Group. He has given presentations at the first International conference on Music in Human Adaptation by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and at the Numerical Analysis Colloquium in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 2000.
Kyle Gann, composer, was born 1955 in Dallas, Texas. He has been assistant professor of music at Bard College since 1997 and new-music critic for the Village Voice since 1986. He is the author of The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and American Music in the 20th Century (Schirmer Books, 1997); he has also written scholarly articles on John Cage, La Monte Young, Henry Cowell, Mikel Rouse, and other American composers. A collection of his Village Voice columns, It's Only As Good As It Sounds, will appear in 2001 (University of California Press). Gann studied composition with Ben Johnston, Morton Feldman, and Peter Gena, and obtained a B. Mus. (1977) from Oberlin College and an M. Mus. (1981) and D. Mus (1983) from Northwestern University. Gann's music is often microtonal, using up to 37 pitches per octave, and his rhythmic language, based on contrasting tempos both in quick succession and at the same time, was developed from study of Hopi, Zuni, and Pueblo Indian musics. His works have been performed on the New Music America, Bang on a Can, and Spoleto festivals, and across Europe. He received a 1994 commission from Music in Motion for his Astrological Studies, and in 1996-97 a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artists' Fellowship. His music is recorded on the Lovely Music, New Tone, and Monroe Street labels..
John Strong Glasier, born in 1910, was the principal violist for the San Diego Symphony orchestra for more than 40 years. Along with virtuoso viola talents, John Glasier had a streak of musical daring -- he was a close friend of Harry Partch and at one point during the 1950s, John Glasier made the garage of his house in El Cajon available for the storage of Harry Partch's instruments. Partch was also a frequent guest at John Glasier's house during the 1950s. John Glasier composed a good deal of microtonal music for viola, for orchestra, and for viola with piano. Many of John Glasier's xenharmonic scores remain unperformed, though John Glasier performed some pieces himself (such as the 31 tone equal suite for solo viola, recorded on Music from the I.D. Group: 1975-1981).
Kraig Grady was born in Montebello, California. While still in his teens, he realized he had an overwhelming urge to be a composer. After studies with Nicolas Slonimsky, Dean Drummond, Dorence Stalvey (all briefly) and Byong-Kon Kim (longer) he produced his earliest compositions. Since meeting Erv Wilson in 1975, he has composed and performed in alternative tunings of Wilson's. In the 80s Kraig Grady (along with Keith Barefoot) became one of the first to revive the combination of live music with silent film. He was responsible for the films as well as the music. During this period he took part in the LA Philharmonic's American Music Weekend as well as New Music America. In 1990 with the opera War and Pieces, film retreated to a background for live performers. Soon afterwards was his first exposure to the music of Anaphoria Island where he took up residence, on and off, for a period of three years. On his return he found himself being asked to act as a liaison between Anaphoria and North America. In this role he has produced numerous solo and ensemble works and three shadow plays BLACK EYE MERU, TEN BLACK EYE I & II.
Sean Griffin (b. 1968) is a native of Southern California where he lives and works. He studied music in Europe and at CalArts. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at UCSD. In addition to composing and performing, Sean has collaborated with visual, video, and theater artists. His music, theater pieces, and multimedia works have been presented in Europe, China, Mexico, and the United States. He was recently a featured artist in the LA Edge festival. His new chamber opera, Sister Benedetta, new video works, and an intermedia collaboration with Juliana Snapper, called Onuphrius, will be premiered on May 12th at Spruce Street Forum in San Diego.
Scott Hackleman. After graduating from CalArts, he spent a year in India on a AIIS/Smithsonian grant to apprentice with an instrument maker there and document the traditional methods of construction and repair of Indian classical instruments. Since then he's worked on hundreds of sitars and tamburas for individuals, UCLA, UCSB, etc. Involved mostly with instrument making stemming from his study in India and experimental instrument work, his commissions have included: a "primitive-style" rudra veena for Pir Vilayat Khan, tamburas for a music-yoga school, copies of some Harry Partch instruments, and various sitar/guitar hybrids. His 19-tone clavichord was part of a year-long exhibit of "new instruments" at the Hollywood Bowl Museum, and he recently gave a presentation of the 19-tone clavichord in a program dealing with new and experimental instruments to the American Association of the Advancement of Science at the annual convention. In the works is another sitar/guitar, more work on the 19-tone clavichords, and repair and construction of sitar, tambura, and rudra veena. He is presently writing a feature article for the Journal of the Guild of American Luthiers taken from his research grant in India, compiling more of his documentation from India for a book on the subject, and studying acoustics and music theory with Erv Wilson.
Lou Harrison. Born in Portland in 1917, Lou Harrison is now recognized as one of the greatest living American composers. He studied with the great composers Henry Cowell (who ignited his interest in music of other cultures and new American music) and Arnold Schoenberg. Harrison pioneered the use of "found" instruments and staged the first percussion concerts with John Cage in 1930s San Francisco. In 1940s New York, Harrison became a protege of composer/critic Virgil Thomson, and conducted the 1946 premiere of Charles Ives' Third Symphony, which won Ives the Pulitzer Prize. In the 1950s, Harrison pioneered the use of just intonation, and he has continued to be in the forefront of the use of alternate tunings. With his partner, Bill Colvig, he built the first American gamelan and as a teacher, performer and composer helped popularize this Indonesian music in the West. As classical music has embraced melody and world music influences, Harrison's music has become justly popular and is available on dozens of CDs. Harrison has worked with distinguished choreographers from Martha Graham to Mark Morris, and his music has been performed by major symphony orchestras and soloists such as Keith Jarrett, Yo Yo Ma, and the Kronos Quartet.
Neil Haverstick is a guitarist, author, teacher and composer. The Denver Post has called him "one of the most sought after (guitar) session players in town." He has performed a wide range of gigs, from appearing with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to opening shows for B.B. King, Steve Miller and King Sunny Ade. As a freelance guitarist Neil has played blues, jazz, classical, country, flamenco, and folk, as well as shows (Man of La Mancha, Grease, Oklahoma, and more) and many private functions. He has also appeared on numerous CD projects by Denver artists, including Clay Kirkland and Mary Stribling. In his CD Acoustic Stick, Neil experiments with new tuning systems of 19 and 34 notes per octave rather than the traditional 12 notes. He explains that "the extra notes, along with the increased capacity for new scales and chords, allow me to create fresh sounding pieces that take standard forms, such as jazz, to unexpected places." His latest CD is Other Worlds.
Barbara Ferrell Hero was born in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BA in art from George Washington University in 1950 and her Master's in Mathematics Education at Boston University in 1980. She attended the New England conservatory of Music Extension Division from 1961 to 1968 studying piano, music theory, and composition. She received a certificate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a special Summer Program in "Techniques in Computer Sound Synthesis" in 1981. She has given lectures at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, the First International Conference on Music in Human Adaptation at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She is Founder/Director of the ILRI (International Lambdoma Research Institute) in Wells, ME. She published in the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Vol. 13, Number 2, 1999. In 2000, she gave Lambdoma presentations in Lithuania, Scotland, London and at the Numerical Analysis Colloquium in Bulgaria. Her chapter, "The Pythagorean System: The Tetractys, the X and the Lambdoma" was published in the book Ambiguity and Music edited by the Slovakian mathematician Jan Haluska.
Andrew Horner is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He co-chaired the 1996 International Computer Music Conference, and recently coauthored the book Cooking with Csound: Woodwind and Brass Recipes with Lydia Ayers, which will soon be available from A-R Editions. His primary research interest is synthesis of musical instruments.
Peter Lucas Hulen is a composer residing in Lansing, Michigan. He is instructor of composition, computer music and music theory at Lansing Community College. His compositions include combinations of acoustic instruments, voices, combined acoustic and electronic media, electronic sound alone, and multimedia. Influences include early 20th century music of England and the U.S.A., jazz, minimalism, Chinese and other East Asian instrumental music, Notre Dame and Counter-Reformation era polyphonies, and various microtonal styles. Interests include acoustics, ethnomusicology, liturgies, peace and social justice on any level, media technology, Chinese and East Asian studies, cultural anthropology, and above all, the form, meaning and value of music in intersecting social, cultural, material and personal contexts. Dr. Hulen has studied composition at the University of Tulsa, Southwestern Theological Seminary, and Michigan State University, and Chinese at the Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute.
Gennadiy Aleksandrovich Kogut was born in 1944 and graduated in 1963 from music college in Kirovograd, Ukraine. In 1969 he graduated from the Chaikovsky Conservatory in Kiev, where he specialized in musicology and theoretical studies. Beginning in 1966 he also studied with A. S. Ogolevetz in Moscow and began experiments in musical hearing and electronic musical tools. He built tools to generate 17, 29, 41, and 53-tone equal temperaments. He composed musical plays in 29- and 41-tone temperaments, but has since withdrawn them. He has taught at the Kiev Conservatory, the Institute of Art, Folklore, and Ethnography in the Ukraine SSR Academy of Sciences, Glier Musical College in Kiev, and the Karpenko-Karyi State Institute of Theater and Art. His publications include 41-tone temperaments and use of their possibilities in modern folk sciences, From acoustic realities -- to music of the future, Microtonality of structure and some of their models, and The basic sound possibilities of 17-tones equal temperaments with M. Shadrin.
Frederick Lesemann has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer, Centrum Center for the Arts, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund, ASCAP, and the USC Faculty Research and Innovation Fund. He has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, The Colonial Symphony, the Pasadena Chamber Orchestra, Southwest Chamber Music, USC, and numerous individuals. His compositions encompass media from orchestra to solo guitar, electronic tape to string quartet, and chorus to percussion ensemble. His works have been performed by such groups as the Kronos Quartet, the Los Angeles Philharmonic new Music Group, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Southwest Chamber Music Society, and at such places as the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers, Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Center, the Ojai Music Festival and the Arnold Schoenberg institute. Recordings of his work is found on Town Hall, Cambria and Crystal records. He is Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California Flora L. Thornton School of Music and was for many years the Director of the Electronic Music Studios there.
Drew Lesso (USA), born 1949, studied composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Cologne BRD where he was a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen 1972-1976. He was a member on the founding board of the Independent Composers Association, Los Angeles 1978 and served as its president in 1989. His music has been performed primarily in Southern California most notably, New Music Los Angeles 1987 and the SCREAM Festival at CalArts 1989. He has guest lectured on Hans Kayser Harmonics at the Otis Parsons School of Art and Design and the Visual Music Alliance in Los Angeles. Two of his works for chamber ensemble were performed at the Cologne Philharmonic as part of the International Computer Music Conference 1988. Slow Down was performed by BassoBongo at Brown Brandice University 1995. Constellations Pt 1 was selected by the International Computer Music Association to be part of the World Wide Web Museum at ArtneT IAMFREE 1995. Published articles in the SEAMUS Journal and Computer Music Journal spring 1995. His compositions join harmonic proportions from the visual world with musical motives by writing computer programs to generate the completed work.
Multi-instrumentalist/composer, Jacky Ligon (b.1962) began composing with microtonal scales in 1984, and is an avid scale designer today. He has a background in electronic music and audio engineering, has composed for theatre and independent films, and played in the microtonal free-form improvisation group "Silent Tongues" 1990-95, where he performed on a midi wind controller, keyboards and percussion. Currently he resides in North Carolina, and is exploring the compositional possibilities of microtonal music creation with computers and hard disk recording, where acoustic and electronic timbres cohabitate. Compositional interests include myriad microtonal scales and polymetrical musical structures.
Steve Lockwood is a classically trained jazz musician. He finished his conservatory training at the University of Missouri at Kansas City Conservatory as a piano performance major in 1971. He formed his own group in Minneapolis, where, in 1974, he met and performed with theater director, vocalist, and composer Meredith Monk. He moved to New York in 1976 to perform with her and her group and his own. With her group, he played major theater venues in New York, Europe, and Japan, and appears on three of Meredith's recordings for ECM records: Dolmen Music, Turtle Dreams, and Atlas: An Opera in Three Acts. With his own, he recorded and toured the East Coast and Europe. He was solo accompanist for Meredith during the sacred music festival at the Getty Museum in October 1999. He has been a fixture in the Los Angeles new music/jazz scene for ten years. He will release a new CD with his ensemble this year, and is happy to perform Samuel Barber's Excursions for piano with the San Pedro City Ballet.
Ralph Lorenz is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Kent State University. He holds a Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University, and B.Mus and M.A. degrees in composition from California State University Long Beach. A former editor of the Indiana Theory Review, his articles and reviews appear in 20th Century Music, Contemporary Music Forum, and Indiana Theory Review. His choral music is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing and Walton Music. Dr. Lorenz has previously taught at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and in visiting appointments at the University of Louisville and Indiana University. His research interests include theory and practice in sixteenth- and twentieth-century music, and theory pedagogy.
Alejandro L. Madrid is a musicologist whose area of interest is twentieth century music, especially that from Latin America. As a member of CENIDIM (Mexico's National Center for Musicological Research) he offered conferences and papers on the music of Silvestre Revueltas, Manuel M. Ponce, Carlos Chavez, and Julian Carrillo in Mexico and the USA, and was influential in the re-evaluation of Rafael Adame (a composer interested in the development of microtonal music during the 1920's, and whose guitar concerto, the first one written in the twentieth century has recently been made public by Editions Orphee). Alejandro has published articles in Heterofonia and Pauta, as well as in important guitar magazines from the USA, Italy and Japan. He holds a master in musicology and a master in fine arts from the University of North Texas and the State University of New York, and is currently pursuing his PhD in musicology at The Ohio State University. Alejandro has been a music history teacher at the Universidad de las Americas-Puebla in Mexico as well as a teaching assistant at The Ohio State University.
Brink McGoogy subverts the intonational scene in Los Angeles from his apartment in the heart of the barrio. This piece, like many of McGoog's other outrages, was generated in real time with the aid of various arpeggiators and MIDI rhythm generators. It uses a pentatonic non-octave nth root of phi scale which, McGoog avers, has something to do with pyramids on Mars. But only microtonalists know for sure.
Brian Mclaren has no official musical qualifications, like Harry Partch and Conlon Nancarrow, and most of the other notable 20th century American musicians.
Joe Monzo
Born January 5, 1962 in Philadelphia.
Studied clarinet, recorder, oboe, bassoon, theory
Graduated Ocean City High School (NJ) 1979.
Attended Manhattan School of Music (NY) for two years, majoring in music composition with Elias Tanenbaum.
Spent a trippy summer in Venice Beach in 1981.
Played keyboard in rock bands Meanstreak and Midnight Riders in Williamstown NJ in early 1980s.
Became interested in microtonal music through Partch's book Genesis of a Music in 1982.
Another trippy summer in Wildwood NJ 1983.
Licensed as a craps dealer (NJ) 1985.
Became a real-estate appraiser (NJ) 1985.
Bought a house in Philadelphia 1990; working on microtonal software.
Played keyboard in Top-40 band One Night Affair in early 1990s.
Wrote first draft of JustMusic: A New Harmony 1994-5.
Started web site and online Tuning Dictionary 1998.
Spent summer in Phoenix then moved to San Diego 1998.
Moved back to Philly 1998 and back to San Diego 2000.
Currently associated with Sonic Arts (Jonathan Glasier).
Isamu Nakamatsu
1973 Born in Okinawa, Japan.
1986-1991 Guitar player of the rock band.
1993 Entered the Okinawa Prefectural College of Art, majoring in Sanshin performance (Sanshin is a traditional instrument of Okinawa).
1994 Received a New Hope Prize for Sanshin and Taiko performance.
1995 Performed in the Okinawa traditional musical Kumiodori Gosamaru as an actor, in the first revival of public performance in Nakagusuku village since World War II.
1998 Graduated from the Okinawa Prefectural College of Art.
2000 Entered Keio university, majoring in computer music.
Terumi Narushima was born in Australia in 1972. She completed her undergraduate degree in music at the University of Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe. She also studied koto with Satsuki Odamura. She is currently completing postgraduate studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where she has been introduced to JI and non-12tET tunings by Greg Schiemer. She has written music for koto, tuba, accordion, carillon and short film and her compositions have been broadcast on Australian radio and television.
Harry Partch was a revolutionary composer, instrument-maker, and dramatist whose book, Genesis of a Music, blazed a path for composers of alternate tunings in the twentieth century. Born to former Chinese missionaries in 1901, Partch grew up in rural Arizona amidst Asian culture and the American West. In 1920 he enrolled in music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, but soon left in disgust at the stifling academicism. He earned a living at odd jobs, learning instead through the public library and his good ear. He came to the remarkable conclusion that European music had followed the wrong path since the time of the classical Greeks, divorcing melodic expression from the tones of the spoken voice, performance from its powerful ritual roots, and harmony from the natural beauty of the harmonic series. To reintroduce the harmonic series, or just intonation, to music, he began to build or adapt his own instruments so that they could play in just scales that used up to 43 tones per octave. Despite a 1934 Carnegie grant to further his research, his ideas were almost entirely ignored by the musical establishment, and, during the Great Depression, Partch was often a hobo. His experiences riding the rails during this time he later memorialized in pieces such as Barstow (1941-42) and U.S. Highball (1943). However, Partch's real voice lay in drama and what he saw as a resurrection of the power of ancient ritual and classical tragedy in such works as King Oedipus (1951), The Bewitched (1955), Revelation at the Courthouse Park (1960), and Delusion of the Fury (1965-66). Some of these works were performed through temporary residencies Partch had at the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin, UCLA, and San Diego State, but for the most part Partch continued an itinerant life, his music and ideas largely unaccepted by the musical establishment until his death in 1974. Though some experimental musicians admired the recordings that Partch had released on his Gate 5 label in the 1960s and 70s, his legacy as a theorist and composer in just intonation has continued to grow as his works are rerecorded and Genesis of a Music reaches a new generation of composers.
Joseph Pehrson, composer-pianist (b. Detroit, 1950) has written works for a wide variety of media including orchestra and chamber works. They have been performed at numerous venues including Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Symphony Space in New York and throughout the U.S. and Eastern Europe. Since 1983 Mr. Pehrson had been co-director of the Composers Concordance in New York. He studied at the Eastman Scholl of Music and the University of Michigan (DMA 1981). Pehrson's teachers included composers Leslie Bassett, Joseph Schwantner, and, informally, Otto Luening and Elie Siegmeister in New York.
Samuel Pellman was born in 1953 in Sidney, Ohio. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he studied composition with David Cope, and a M.M.A. from Cornell University, where he studied with Karel Husa and Robert Palmer. Many of his works may be heard on recordings by the Musical Heritage Society, the Cornell University Wind Ensemble, and Redwood Records, and much of hi music is published by the Continental Music Press and Wesleyan Music Press. He is also the author of An introduction to the Creation of Electroacoustic Music, a textbook published by Wadsworth, Inc. Presently he is a Professor of Music at Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, where he teaches theory and composition and is director for the Studio for Contemporary Music.
Michael Pisaro was born in Buffalo in 1961. His main compositional studies were with Geage Flynn, Alan Stout and Ben Johnson. His music has been selected by the ISCM jury for performance on two World Music Days festivals (Copenhagen, 1996; Manchester,1998) and has also been part of festivals in Hong Kong (ICMC 1998), Vienna (Wein Modern, 1997), Aspen (1991), and Chicago (New Music Chicago, 1990, 1991). He has had extended composer residencies in Germany (Kustlerhof Schreyahn), Switzerland (Forumclaque/Baden), Israel (Miskenot Sha'ananmim), Greece (EarTalk) and in the US (Birch Creek Music Festival/Wisconsin). Concerts devoted to his music have been given in Munich, Jerusalen, Brussels, Curitiba (Brazil), Berlin, Chicago, Dusseldorf, Zunich, Cologne, Aarau, and elsewhere. Most of his work of the last eight years is published by Timescaper Music (Germany). Two CDs of his work have been released by Edition Wandelweiser Records. He taught at Northwestern University from 1986 to 2000 and has recently joined the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts.
Born on January 4, 1962 in Taplow, England, Rod Poole began his studies in guitar in 1972. He has experimented with various musical idioms, including free improvisation, free jazz and live electronic music. A founding member of the Oxford Improvisor's Cooperative, Poole's association was between the years 1983 and 1986. He performed with Derek Bailey as well as in private collaborations with Keith Rowe of AMM. After moving to the United States in 1989, his studies in just intonation began with instructor, Ervin Wilson.
Thanassis Rikakis is the Associate Director of the Computer Music Center of Columbia University. He is responsible for the Research and Development activities of the Center. He has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University since 1994. Rikakis has written works for chamber ensembles, for computer and for orchestra. He has also composed music for the television, the theater and cinema. Rikakis' research work concentrates on music perception and psychoacoustics with special emphasis on pitch perception , use of microtones in western compositions and medical applications of music.
John Schneider is an internationally recognized guitarist, composer, author and broadcaster whose weekly television and radio programs have brought the sound of the guitar into millions of homes for the past fifteen years. He holds a Ph.D.. in Physics and Music from the University of Wales, music degrees from the University of California and the Royal College of Music [London], and is past President of the Guitar Foundation of America. For the past two decades, the artist has performed almost exclusively on the Well-Tempered Guitar which uses different patterns of fretting according to the key, or the tuning system required. A specialist in contemporary music, Schneider's The Contemporary Guitar (University of California Press) has become the standard text in the field. He has performed in Europe, Japan and throughout North America, and has been featured soloist at New Music America, and on NPR's "Performance Today" and PRI's "New Sounds". Most recently he has been featured in New York's American Festival of Microtonal Music, Denver's Microstock '95 and '97, California's annual Mozart Festival, the Da Camera Society's Chamber Music in Historical Sites, and Southwest Chamber Music's Radical P.A.S.T. He works as a music Professor at Pierce College in Los Angeles, is music critic for Soundboard magazine, and is the artistic director of MicroFest. John Schneider's recording of the guitar music of Lou Harrison was released by Etcetera Records [Holland] in 1990, and his recording Just West Coast [Bridge Records BCD 9071] was chosen "CD of the Year" by CD Review in 1994. In 1995, his chamber trio Just Strings was invited by the Japanese Embassy to present a series of lectures and concerts throughout Japan under the auspices of the prestigious Interlink Festival which annually selects one American ensemble to represent new trends in American Music. The group's latest CD Sasha Matson: Range of Light was released by New Albion Records in 1997.
Greg Schiemer (b.1949) is a composer and instrument-builder who has been active in the Sydney experimental music scene since 1970. His dance-theatre work Brolga (1973) was one of the earliest developments in Australian computer music. In collaboration with experimental choreographer Phillippa Cullen (1972-75) he created interactive electronic music using theremins as a control interface for dance movement. His music also involved large-scale outdoor events such as the ferry concert on Sydney Harbour (1977) as well as interactive radio broadcast events like the Concert on Bicycles (1983) and The Talk-back Piano (1991). He has performed Spectral Dance (1992), Token Objects (1993) and Shantivanam (1996) at festivals in Australia, Greece, Japan & Hong Kong. These works use his purpose-built interactive electronic instrument designs such as the Tupperware Gamelan and the MIDI Tool Box, described in Leonardo Music Journal. He currently lectures in electronic composition at Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Rick Tagawa studied composition with Elliot Carter and Luciano Berio at the Juilliard School and later did graduate studies in ethnomusicology at UCLA. It was there that he developed an interest in Ugandan traditional music with its sophisticated use of a 5-tone quasi-equal temperament. (In this music the seconds can vary from 190 to 279 cents over a 3 1/2-octave xylophone.) He has published a composition for percussion and has numerous other works to his credit, including a large-scale work for orchestra using Kiganda musical techniques and 72-tone equal temperament. His interests include the intonational nuances in American popular music, Indian music, and other musics.
Stephen James Taylor has a unique musical identity. His style represents a blend of classical, rock, blues, gospel, African, and avant garde. His scores include most of Charles Burnett's films, including the film version of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson (1995) and the TV series I'll Fly Away (1993, for which he received an Emmy nomination). Other recent credits include the 1998 Warner Brothers feature, Why Do Fools Fall In Love (featuring occasional use of 23 tone fibonacci scale), the 1999 cable movie Passing Glory, and the PBS movie Brother Future (1991), for which he also received an Emmy nomination. His most recent feature score is for Blessed Art Thou, which screened in the competition at the Sundance Festival in 2000. The score features elaborate vocal writing and microtonal harmony using a Pythagorean 17 tone scale. He has done a great deal of work in animation, providing the underscore and main title for Disney's Mickey Mouseworks and scores for episodes of Steven Spielberg's Tiny Toon Adventures and Disney's Raw Toonage (which also received an Emmy nomination). His scores for The Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa included a 7-tone scale based on balafon tunings from Mozambique, and one episode's score was nominated for a Daytime Emmy. After graduating from Stanford University in 1976 with a B.A. in music, he studied composition for four years with Henri Lazarof, professor of music at UCLA. Taylor's second chamber symphony was commissioned and premiered by the Pasadena Chamber Orchestra in 1983. It was later performed by the Detroit Symphony in 1990. His various chamber works have been performed throughout the country. In 1996 he was commissioned to write music for Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics and was one of the conductors of the Atlanta Symphony for that occasion. At present he is developing his skills as a fretless guitar player. His ongoing projects include co-writing and producing songs with his wife Mary Lou, for a sequel to their 1991 children's album, Little Binky Baker, as well as working on a microtonal pop album and recording with his experimental women's vocal group called Brides of The Wind. The latter group can be heard on many of his scores.
Brian Vessa is a drummer, keyboard player, and composer, largely self-taught, with experience in jazz, rock, blues, and other styles. He is a professional audio engineer with decades of experience, and is currently producing a CD of original works with his band. His musical interests are broad and include the harmonies of just intonation. His other interests include home brewing; his brews with Mr. Brode have won numerous medals.
Born in 1953, Bill Wesley is a master microtonal instrument builder and a master of live light shows. Starting at the age of 14, Wesley perfected his technique with classic analog light shows until he has today reached the point where his light shows exceed the possibilities afforded by computer visual effects projectors.
Ervin Wilson (b. 1928) was born in a remote area of northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, where he lived until the age of fifteen. His mother taught him to play the reed organ and to read musical notation. He began to compose at an early age, but immediately discovered that some of the sounds he was hearing mentally could not be reproduced by the conventional intervals of the organ. As a teenager he began to read books on Indian music, developing an interest in concepts of raga. While he was in the Air Force in Japan, a chance meeting with a total stranger introduced him to musical harmonics, which changed the course of his life and work. Influenced by the work of Joseph Yasser, Mr. Wilson began to think of the musical scale as a living process -- like a crystal or plant. on his own, he re-invented logarithms to base 2, a powerful tool for measuring musical intervals. He began to systematically explore all the equal divisions of the octave that were more than the conventional twelve tones, coming up with scales of 17, 19, 22, and 31 tones that were especially pleasing. He has been mentor to many composers and instrument builders. The goal of his research with scales is to make them musically accessible to the composer and the listener. "I sculpt in the architecture of the scale. Other people come along and animate it.
Shahrokh Yadegari (Iran, 1961) graduated from Purdue University with a BS in Electrical Engineering in 1982, and from MIT's Media Lab with a master's in 1992, where he studied computer music with Tod Machover. He has studied santur with Esmaeel Tehrani since 1987. Yadegari has worked at IRCAM in the years 1987 and 1989. He is one of the founders and the artistic director of Persian Arts Society (Kereshmeh Records), an organization dedicated to advancement and preservation of Persian traditional music. He is currently a PhD Candidate in Critical Studies and Experimental Practices at the music department of University of California, San Diego, where he is studying music philosophy and interactive performances with George Lewis and Miller Puckette. Yadegari has given talks in the United States and Europe at institutes such as at IRCAM, Sonology at the Royal Conservatory of The Netherlands, CNMAT at the University of California Berkeley, and Society for Electro-Acoustic Music Los Angeles chapter. His music has been played in the United States, Sweden, Netherlands, and China.
George Zelenz was born in 1968 in San Diego, California. Besides being a composer, he is also an architect and builder, a fine woodworker, painter, and poet. Although self-taught as a composer, his work has been informed from friendships with the composer Lou Harrison, and the intonation polymath Ervin M. Wilson. Recent performances include the premiere of X, only better by the New York ensemble Essential Music at Dartmouth College, with repeat performances at the 2000 Spoleto festival in Charleston S.C. and concerts in New York and Japan. His music has appeared often in national radio, and television broadcasts. He most recently scored music for the award winning PBS documentary about international glass artist Dale Chihuly, entitled "Chihuly over Jerusalem." Zelenz has performed, and lectured widely, including New Music Research Day at P.A.S.I.C. 97, and a "Music & Architecture" series of lectures at SCI-ARC.