- Mark So
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Mark So, 2008.
Mark So (born June 14, 1978 in Syracuse, NY) is an American experimental composer and musician[1][2] (mainly pianist) active in Los Angeles, CA. His works, numbering over 500, are mostly text-based and influenced by New York School aesthetics, Fluxus, and the Wandelweiser composers collective.
His work has been described as varied and exploring open "theaters" of the sensible by formalizing engagements with faint, passing subtleties of continuity and arrangement (time and harmony) that often demand great attention, through changing experiences of silence. As critic Petra Hedler writes: "Mark So strongly embraces the phenomenon of the just barely audible, taking up a broad palette of sound-producing devices (including glasses, stones)."[3]
L-R: Joseph Kudirka, Liam Mooney, Luke Thomas Taylor, G. Douglas Barrett, and Michael Pisaro perform Mark So's salmonella kitchen at Cold Storage, Los Angeles, July 27, 2006.
Mark So performs with various materials at Giant Rock Airport (abandoned) near Landers, CA, November 4, 2006, during FESTIVAL (6) DESERT :On July 10, 2006, So collaborated with composer James Orsher, artist Michael Parker of Routes and Methods and 16 area musicians in realizing a notable 3-hour performance of James Tenney's In a large, open space (1994) at the 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2) Cold Storage art facility in downtown Los Angeles.[4][1][5]
A graduate of Pomona College (BA 2000) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA 2006), So's composition teachers have included Michael Pisaro, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, Stephen "Lucky" Mosko, Sara Roberts, Thomas Flaherty and Annetta Kaplan.
James Orsher performs Mark So's Sur la plage at Goleta Beach, CA, November 11, 2007, during mark so: late early works.In Fall 2007, the week-long retrospective mark so: late early works took place at UC Santa Barbara and environs, and featured 12 works for various performers/instrumentation, diverse locations (many of them outdoors), and sometimes extreme durations (up to 6 hours).[6][2] In 2007-8, So's article "nearing/hearing" appeared in Everybody Loves Difficult Music[7] (the companion volume to the series Everybody Loves Difficult Music and You Too Can Play Difficult Music at Machine Project)[8][3] as well as The Open Space Magazine.[9] In 2009, So published BANGS,[10] a book experimentally detailing Manfred Werder's ongoing performance (begun in August, 2006) of So's 2005 composition BANGS [to Manfred Werder], including the score, correspondence between the two composers over the course of the realization, reflection upon the process, and photographs of salient incidents.[11]
Notes
- ^ Pisaro, Michael. harmony series 11-16, Edition Wandelweiser Records (EWR 0710), 2007. ISRC DE-G72-96710 01-09
- ^ Pisaro, Michael. an unrhymed chord, Edition Wandelweiser Records (EWR 0802), 2008. ISRC DE-G72-960802 01
- ^ Hedler, Petra. "CalArts Studenten in Dortmund und Düsseldorf", Nordrhein-Westfalen Gazette, Düsseldorf, May 1, 2006.
- ^ Routes and Methods. "James Tenney: In a large, open space", Cold Storage, 2006.
- ^ Hargreaves, Kathryn. "Sage in Sawdust", The Arts District Citizen, Los Angeles, August, 2006 (21).
- ^ Orsher, James. "mark so : late early works", boredom and danger - experimental music concerts and scores, 2007.
- ^ So, Mark. "nearing/hearing", Everybody Loves Difficult Music (Orsher, So and Roberts, eds.), Machine Project, 2007. ISBN 0-9753140-2-5
- ^ Machine Project. Everybody Loves Difficult Music, 2006-2009.
- ^ So, Mark. "nearing/hearing", The Open Space Magazine, Fall 2008 (119-123).
- ^ So, Mark and Werder, Manfred. BANGS, lulu.com, 2009. ISBN 978-0-557-06068-9
- ^ So, Mark and Werder, Manfred. BANGS, lulu.com, 2009. ISBN 978-0-557-06068-9
External links
Categories:- American composers
- Living people
- People from Syracuse, New York
- 1978 births
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