Graduate Composition Colloquium No. 4

- Douglas Geers -

Drama, Data, Scores, and Circuits

WHEN: Tuesday, November 19th,10:30AM
WHERE: NYU Music Department
24 Waverly Place, Room 220, NY 10003

abstract

Composer Douglas Geers has spent much of his career investigating how to integrate acoustic instruments, electroacoustic techniques, and visual media. In this presentation he will trace his evolving methodology and pose questions regarding what roles composers choose to assume in the creative process.

bio

Composer Douglas Geers works extensively with technology in composition, performance, and multimedia collaborations, focusing on creative integration of new technologies and multimedia dimensions into concert music, with a continuing emphasis on interactive electroacoustic works.
Reviewers have described Geers’ music as “glitchy… keening… scrabbling… contemplative” (S. Smith, NYTimes), “kaleidoscopic” (A. Lindemann Malone, Wash. Post), “fascinating… virtuosic… beautifully eerie” (J. Lowe, Montpelier Times-Argus), “Powerful” (Neue Zuericher Zietung), “arresting… extraordinarily gratifying” (Dierdre Donovan, TheaterScene.net), “rhythmically complex, ominous” (KE. Moorman, CVNC), and have praised its “virtuosic exuberance” (Computer Music Journal) and “shimmering electronic textures” (Kyle Gann, Village Voice.)
Geers’ works include Inanna, a 90-minute multimedia theater piece (2009, Zürich); an opera, Calling (2008, New York); Sweep, written for the Princeton University Laptop Orchestra (2008, Chicago); a violin concerto, Laugh Perfumes, commissioned by Festival Unicum for the RTV Orchestra of Slovenia (2006, Ljubljana); Gilgamesh, a 70-minute multimedia theatrical concerto; and numerous works of acoustic and electroacoustic concert music.
Geers completed his doctorate at Columbia University, where he studied with Tristan Murail, Fred Lerdahl, Brad Garton, and Jonathan D. Kramer. Currently he is Associate Professor of Music Composition at the City University of New York Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, where he is Director of the Center for Computer Music (www.bc-ccm.org).
See Geers’ personal website for information, audio, video, and scores: www.dgeers.com

Upcoming Guests: Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Dec. 3