MAY 14 – JUNE 3, 2012
Residency #145
Application Deadline EXTENDED: February 10, 2012

PAUL DRESHER , composer

Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own personal style. He pursues many forms of expression including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music performances, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater, dance, and film. As an experienced collaborator with artists from all performing disciplines, he also has been actively involved as a producer in the realization of collaboratively-created opera, music theater and new media projects.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist,  San Francisco Ballet, Meet the Composer, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music and Chamber Music America.  He has performed or had his works performed throughout North America, Asia, and Europe at venues including New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Lincoln Center, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra,  the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, Arts Summit Indonesia ’95 and Festival Interlink in Japan.

Dresher has created new works in collaboration with such directors as Robert Woodruff, Rinde Eckert, Tony Taccone, Richard E.T. White, Les Waters, and Chen Shi Zheng. Dresher has also worked extensively with many choreographers including Margaret Jenkins, Brenda Way/ODC San Francisco, Nancy Karp, Wendy Rogers, and Allyson Green.

Recent performances include the December 2009 performance of his invented instrument work Glimpsed From Afar on two programs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Disney Hall.  In March of 2009 at Stanford University, Dresher premiered Schick Machine, a music theater work performed on a set comprised entirely of invented musical instruments/sound sculptures and created in collaboration with writer/director Rinde Eckert, percussionist/performer Steven Schick and mechanical sound artist Matt Heckert.  In  April 2008, the San Francisco Ballet premiered Dresher’s orchestral score for Thread, his collaboration with choreographer Margaret Jenkins, commissioned for the Ballet’s 75th anniversary.  In May 2006, Dresher’s chamber solo chamber opera The Tyrant, for tenor John Duykers and with a libretto by Jim Lewis, premiered in five performances at Opera Cleveland and has now been produced in eight other US cities.

He has had a longtime interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee as well as Balinese and Javanese music. 

For more information about Paul Dresher and the work of the Paul Dresher Ensemble, please visit www.dresherensemble.org

Residency Statement
I welcome the opportunity of working with composers – and potentially instrumentalists and other performing artists as well – who are interested in pushing the boundaries of composition in the context of live performance. Areas of particular interest may include composing in the context of collaboration with other performing arts disciplines and new electronic media, the combination of traditional acoustic with electro-acoustic or purely electronic instruments, the invention of new acoustic and electro-acoustic instruments; and an exploration of the practical challenges of composing with non-equal tempered scales,  including tuning systems based on the harmonic series. 

The focus of my own work surrounding the period of the residency will be the composition of a concerto for two of my very large invented stringed instruments – the Quadrachord and the Hurdy Grande – and orchestra.  This work will be premiered by conductor Joana Carneiro and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in the Fall of 2012.

While the issues that arise of out of this composition touch upon all the areas mentioned above, because both invented instruments play with remarkable ease in just intonation (i.e. using intervals based on the harmonic series), of particular interest (and challenge) to me is to discover reliable performance techniques by which traditional orchestral instruments can play in the same tunings as the invented instruments. While in no way meaning to limit Associate Artists to those sharing my interest in this rather esoteric area of music-making,  I am interested in working with instrumentalists, particularly brass players, who would like to explore the resources and limitations of playing in non-equal tempered tunings.

Application Requirements
Composers and performers please include the following three items:

• A one-page bio.
• Up to 30 minutes of examples of your work in the electronic medium that best represents the work – CD, DVD, JPEG photos, PDFs of scores, Quicktime Movie etc.  You may send links to web sites but I strongly prefer to have physical media that can be accessed off-line.
• A brief (and candid) statement about yourself as an artist and what you may hope to explore or accomplish during the residency.

FULL Scholarships to attend FREE are available for painters and sculptors (through The Joan Mitchell Foundation) and composers (through The Sally Mead Hands Foundation) for ALL accepted artists who submit ACA Financial Aid forms upon acceptance. Limited additional Financial Aid is available for writers through The Pabst Charitable Foundation for the Arts and the Atlantic Center for the Arts Advance an Artist Program.