BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

PERSONAL
I was born in Chicago in 1943 and lived in a suburb of Chicago—Winnetka—through high school. (The details of my life after high school can be pieced together in the information below.)  I would have to say that my family situation was, on the surface, normal, but I can't truly say the same for myself: being an honorable mention all-state football player, captain of the team; composing 12-tone music, painting in a style similar to Pollock—all at the same time—is typical of how I have lived my life and is reflected in much of my work.   I would characterize my life as I have lived it and my outlook toward life in general as one in which the parameters and boundaries of the culturally mediated terms of life we all come to know as we grow up have, for me personally, not worked too well. While I don't see myself as being outside the culture's clear behavioral and lifestyle categories with which we are all familiar, I have come to understand that I am constantly moving through, and drawing from these various categories without making it clear to others that my m.o. is based on a constant, fluid movement through the categories—not an articulation of any given category—with the end result being that I often find myself between categories, so to speak, which I have chosen to see as valid categories unto themselves.  

For others, my methods might seem confused at times, indeed inappropriate, and perhaps even worse.  I am not one to argue that I am a misunderstood person.  On the contrary, I think I am all to well understood and therein lies the conundrum of my life:  I am like the magician who does his trick, thrills his audience, and then proceeds to explain how the trick was done, thus dispelling the thrill of the magic itself.  In much of my work I do something similar:  I deconstruct and reconstruct things in the same instant.  Like the hapless magician who doesn't get it, I am in effect saying, “Now you see it, now you see it.”   The saving grace in all of this for me is that there are those who actually “see it.”  On a non-art related note, I had to cut way back on my serious involvement in tennis—both teaching and playing— that I had been doing for almost thirty years. It has been about four years since I took up—after a forty-year hiatus— playing pool again.  This time around it is quite different and actually quite serious: I am finally learning the game properly, in particular, the game of ‘nine ball,’ a demanding game that combines various aspects of all the other pool games including actual billiards.  I play and/or practice seven days a week. I would like to acknowledge my pool mentors here for the record: Jim Colvin and Paul Yoshiwara.

MUSIC
Composition studies: Initial Studies with Horace Reisberg (1958-61, New Trier High School) and Darius Milhaud (Aspen Music Festival, 1961). Composition studies, Kenneth Gaburo; Electronic Music and Acoustics, Computer-tape driven Music Copying Typewriter, Lejaren Hiller; University of Illinois (1961-63). Further studies in Rome (1963-64) with Aldo Clementi, Franco Evangelisti, Giacinto Scelsi, Giulio Rotoli, and Boris Porena. Further studies, William Sydeman, Mannes College of Music (1964-66).

Awards: Student Composition Awards from Broadcast Music, Inc. (1965 and 68). Creative Associate at the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, Buffalo, New York (1967). Guest Composer, Center of the Creative and Performing Arts (1975). Fellowship, Bennington Composers’ Conference (1968). Residence, The MacDowell Colony (1974, 1975 and 1977). Grants: National Endowment for the Arts (1975, 1977). New York State CAPS Award (1975). Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Inc. (1975). Ford Foundation Recording Grant (1976). New York State Meet the Composer program (1974, '75,'76,'77). New York State CAPS Composer Exposure Program (1975).

Positions, Work, Publication, Recordings, Performances: General Manager, Composers’ Forum, New York City (1972-73).  Music Director, Hudson Valley New Music Ensemble (1974-76). Board of Directors, Composers’ Forum (1974-75). Board of Governors, American Composers’ Alliance (1975-77). Advisory Board, Composers’ Recordings Inc. (1977-78). Advisory board, Alternative Center for International Arts (1977-78); Guest Lecturer, Music and Poetry, State University College of New York at New Paltz (1972). Project Director, American Composers' Alliance Publication Project (1976-77).

Private Composition Teaching. Professional Music Photoengraving (for Peters, Wolpe and Wuorinen; I was asked by Cage to become his personal copyist in 1977) and Graphic Design. Contemporary Music Curator, Patelson Music House, NYC (1967-72) Member BMI. Music published by American Composers Edition, Lingua Press (distributed by Frogpeak Music) and American Composers’ Alliance. Recordings: Kata and Ludus Primus on CRI (1972); The Winds Rise in the North on Titanic Records (1976). Re-release on CD, The Winds Rise in the North, Edition RZ, Berlin, Germany (2007). I Saw My Mother Ascending Mt. Fuji on Innova Records (2009). Sovereign Of The Centre and The Realm Of Indra’s Net on Edition RZ (2010).

Major performances include: Tanglewood, Once Festival, The Kitchen, NYC. Experimental Intermedia Foundation (Phil Niblock) , Evenings for New Music, Buffalo and New York City. New York Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, Conducted by Pierre Boulez. Berlin Festival (Perf. Creative Associates, Buffalo).

VISUAL ARTS
Group Show, Music Notation and Graphic Music, Berne Switzerland (1974). Solo Exhibition, Graphics and Graphic Music, Gallery 219, Buffalo, New York (April 1976).  Installation, putting the eternal in its place, Paintings and Tape Music, Hallwalls Gallery, Buffalo, New York (April 1976). Solo Exhibition, Graphics and Graphic Music, Alternative  Center for International Arts, New York City (September 1976). Exhibition, Graphics, Park  South Gallery, New York City (November 1976). Group Show, Graphic Music, P.S.1, New York City (1982). Grant: New York State Committee for the Visual Arts (1976). Solo Exhibition, SX70 Polaroid, Athenaeum, La Jolla, CA. (1983). Group Show, SX70 Polaroid, Photography Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1983). AMP Juried Show, Photography Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1984). Group Show, Center for International Arts, New York City (1984). Group Show, 42 San Diego Artists, Photo-Collages, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (1985). Solo Exhibition, Graphic Music, Graphics, Photo-Collages, SX70 Polaroid and 35MM Photography, Photography Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1985). Group Show, 35MM Photography, Young Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1985). Group Show, Photo-Collages, Museum of Photographic Arts Permanent Collection Show, San Diego, CA. (1985).   Group Show, Graphic Music, New Music America, Houston, Texas (1986).  Group Show, SX70 Mixed-Media collages, Shoshanna Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. (1986). Solo Exhibition, Paintings and Mixed-Media Collages, Gwydion Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1989). Group Show,  Gray Paintings, Rebecca Cabo Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1989). Group Show, Mixed-Media Collages, Schlosberg Gallery, Los Angles, CA. (1990). Group Show, Wood Construction Pieces, Rebecca Cabo Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1990).  Group Show, Wood Construction Pieces, Conlon Moreno Gallery, Santa Fe, NM (1990). Solo Exhibition, Paintings, Wood Construction Pieces and Mixed-Media Collages, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1990). Solo/Group Exhibition, Black Wood Construction Pieces, Southwestern College, San Diego, CA. (1990). Group Show, Mixed-Media Collages, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1991). Group Show, Mixed-Media Collages and Paper Cutouts, Hartman & Company Gallery, La Jolla, CA. (1994). Guest Lecturer, Holocaust Memorial Week, Claremont College, Claremont, CA. (1995). DIE PLAGE: Installation, Southwestern College, San Diego, CA. (1995). DIE PLAGE: Anne Frank Installation, Half Moon Bay, CA. (1997). DIE PLAGE:  Anne Frank Installation, Newport, OR. (2000, Grant: Collins Foundation). DIE PLAGE: Installation, The Laboratory, L.A. CA. (2000). Solo Exhibition, Photo-collages, Herr H.: Leben und Zeit and Tod in Venedig, Plush Club, L.A., CA. (2000). Grant: DIE PLAGE Book Project, Peninsula Community Foundation (2003).  Publications: Graphic Music from Beyond the Still Point published in Wallpaper magazine, London, England (1976). Limited edition of graphics from Minion for Arnold Schoenberg published by Lingua Press, (1977). Surfing is Harder Than You  Think  published in Perspectives of New Music (1982). Images from DIE PLAGE in Bittersweet Legacy: Creative Responses to the Holocaust published by University Press of America, (2001). Filmwork, Webern's Gambit with Cello accompaniment made for Downtown Ensemble, performed in New York City June 2008.