David Behrman’s program will include revivals of two pieces from the early days of electronic/computer music as well as one or two recent ones. These are pieces in which the electronics provide situations to be explored rather than fixed compositions with specific instructions to performers. The concert will follow a week of collaborative work with Mills students during Behrman’s residency there, and will feature participation by two Mills students: Jiwon Choi and Lee Hodel.
FREE and Open to the Public
Thu, Feb 21, 7:30pm
CCRMA Stage
The Knoll
David Behrman has been active as a composer and artist since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations as well as compositions for performance in concerts. My Dear Siegfried, Leapday Night, On the Other Ocean, Interspecies Smalltalk and Open Space with Brass are among Behrman's works for soloists and ensembles. Among his sound and multimedia installations are Cloud Music (a collaboration with Robert Watts and Bob Diamond); Pen Light (2002), and View Finder (2005). Cloud Music was acquired (2013) into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. Sonic Arts performed extensively in North America and Europe from 1966 till 1976. He was co-director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College from 1975 to 1980. Over a period of several decades Behrman was associated as composer / performer with the Cunningham Dance Company and received commissions to compose music for several of the repertory dances. The first of those, “Walkaround Time” from 1968, was revised and restaged in 2017 for the Paris Opera Ballet. During the Sixties and Seventies he assisted John Cage and David Tudor with several projects, among them 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering (EAT) in 1966. Behrman has received grants, commissions and residencies from various sources, among them the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the DAAD, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Japan / United States Friendship Commission. In 2016 he held the Inge Maren Otto composer’s fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.
Audio recordings of his works are on the Alga Marghen, XI, Lovely Music, Wergo and Pogus labels; videos can be viewed at Roulette.org and ubu.com.
http://www.dbehrman.net
Cost: FREE