|
|
 |
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
!!!Edgerton wins the Kompositionspreis der
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart 2007!!!
Tempo Mental Rap (2005, #72)
semifinalist in the 2007 Composition Contest of the Netherlands
Radio Choir
Kalevi Matus (2000, #58)
Sélection in the 5th Dutilleaux International Composition Compétition,
2003
1 sonata (2004, #70)
31 FESTIVAL SYNTHESE BOURGES 2001
The Elements of Risk in Creation (2001, #59)
Finalist in the 1999 Sal Martirano composition competition
XHAIN (1995, #23)
Selected by the Friends and Enemies of New Music
Net/Byrinth (1991, #15)
1st prize in the MacDowell Club Award for composition, 1995
Unspoken Crime (1988, #9)
Selected by the Midwest Composers Symposium, 1988
A Penny for the Young Guy (1986, #3)
3rd prize in the 1987 National Federation of Music Clubs Composition
Competition
Ai (1987, #5)
Honorable Mention in the in 1987 National Federation of Music
Clubs Composition Competition
Dwellers of the Southwest (1986, #2)
1st prize in the Michigan State University Orchestral Composition
Competition, 1986
The Final Diary of a Branch (1985, #1)
|
|
|
Michael Edward Edgerton received the Doctorate of Musical Arts in Music Composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
in 1994. Since then, he has had international success as a composer, performer, researcher, and theorist. In total, his activities
encompass an interdisciplinary approach involving the disciplines of music composition, systematic musicology, music theory,
music performance, acoustics, voice science and perception.
Michael's compositional activities are centered on dynamical generative processes that exist at the junctions where systems
of complexity meet acoustical exploration. Theoretically this approach utilizes principles adapted from his study of nonlinear
dynamics, scale-free networks, acoustics and perception. This information is often utilized in compositional settings that
feature decoupled and scaled multidimensional phase spaces which attempt to heighten the inherent nonlinearities of instruments
and voices.
Michael's catalogue lists over 70 compositions, which have been performed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. These compositions
have received prizes and recognition in: The Fifth Dutilleux International Composition Competition, The Sal Martirano Composition
Award and The MacDowell Club among others. Since 2000, his compositions have been heard at Music for the Third Ear - April
in Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music, John Donald Robb Composers Symposium in Albuquerque and the Roy O. Disney Hall
at CalArts, Unerhörte mUsik: Luft (ex) wechselnd (Berlin), Borderl-ne (Malmö), 4+ (Leipzig), New Music Days (Istanbul), 18.
Tage für Neue Musik Rottenburg_A Quattro!_Festival für Streichquartett, The 11th Annual International Electro-Acoustic Music
Festival in Brooklyn, New York, RealTime & Presence - Composition of Virtual Environments, Generative Art 2001, CYNETART
2001, Reservoir V (Berlin), Synthese 2001 in Bourges, France, XIII CIM (L'Aqila, Italy), Musiques Nouvelles et 2000 Miniatures
pour l'An 2000, among others. In addition, Michael's compositions have been broadcast on radio and television in Germany,
South Korea, Australia, and the United States. He is the recipient of numerous grants, awards and recognition, including awards
from the Paul Sacher Stiftung; the European Union; Meet-The-Composer/Arts Midwest; The American-Scandinavian Foundation; The
Kittredge Fund; Akademie Schloss Solitude; The National Center for Voice and Speech; and others.
Michael is actively engaged in research that utilizes the tools of acoustics, perception and nonlinear dynamics and may
be classified as follows: a) acoustical and physiologic study of (extra-normal) vocal production; b) research focused on decoupled
and scaled multidimensional phase spaces; c) study of nonlinear dynamics applied to sound production and musical composition,
and; d) perception. The results of these activities have led to publications in the journals Organized Sound, Perspectives
of New Music, Journal of Voice, Contemporary Music Review (forthcoming), Complexity Digest and Scientific American, among
others, as well as a book (The 21st Century Voice, the newest addition in the New Instrumentation Series, Scarecrow Press,
Lanham: MD, 2005).
Edgerton's book, written for performers and composers, is based upon vocal physiology and acoustics and whose main intent
is to suggest areas of further vocal exploration. The response have been outstanding, in a current review at LEONARDO on-line,
Stefaan Van Ryssen writes "Edgerton has undertaken this Herculean task with enthusiasm, insight, and a lot of common
sense. Building on such diverse sciences as phonetics, physics, organology, and linguistics, he describes and analyzes any
vocal and paravocal sound imaginable -- and some of them unimaginable if you rely only on your inner ear and your past experience.
Even better, he has collected hundreds of fragments from scores and 99 audio samples to illustrate the many techniques and
practices he describes. ... This is, by far, the most comprehensive text ever published on vocal techniques. Its many illustrations
-- both graphical and auditory -- and its clear and concise writing makes it an invaluable sourcebook for composers and performers".
In addition, the pre-publication reviews were positive, such as: "#2. The 21st Century Voice presents information that
has not been gathered together in such a useful and categorical manner before. I know of no books approaching its wealth of
information. All composers and singers studying today would do well to acquaint themselves with the material in the book.
3. The 21st century Voice is a monumental achievement demonstrating SUPERIOR scholarship. 4. There is nothing in print like
The 21st Century Voice. 5. This is an enormously important book, a kind of "dictionary" of vocal techniques and
sound possibilities that enhance a singer's palate of colors."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHRONOLOGY
Michael Edward Edgerton
1961
born 31 October 1961 in Racine, Wisconsin
1979-1984
University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Performance; composition studies with August Wegner
1985-1988
Michigan State University, Master of Music in Music Composition; composition studies with Jere Hutcheson.
REGIONS: sound masses - The Final Diary of a Branch for orchestra; experimental music theater, text and music, extended
voices - A Penny for the Young Guy for narrator, voices and chamber ensemble; logarithmically expanding integer matrix -
Expansions for piano and Expansions 1a for wind quartet; gestural, cellular dynamism - Ai for brass trio and Unspoken
Crime for piano trio
1988-1994
The University of Illinois, Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Composition; composition studies with William Brooks and Morgan
Powell
REGIONS: electroacoustic music/live electronics - In America for two or four channel tape and Whose Land? for rock band
and two channel tape; experimental music theater, opera, expanded relationships between audience/space/performance, and
interdisciplinary composition/collaboration – Hour History an opera, Fama Fraternitatis for voice, dancers and
two tunnelers, The 15th Century Walled Garden - Apokatastasis for solo percussion, mosh pit, geodesic dome, car hoods, rocks,
metal and others, and A Broken Collaboration for solo actor, three voices, electric guitar and cello; extended vocal techniques
The Hidden Thunder of Screaming Souls for voice and viola; external logics (scientific, mechanical, information theory, literature)
influencing ordering principles of composition - Michelle 8091-434 for bass clarinet, bar. sax, tuba, double bass, trap set,
The Night of Brahman . The Dance of Fire for solo violin, and Regret of a Noiseless Sundering for saxophone quartet; complexities
- Net/Byrinth - Rec. Study 1 for trumpet, horn and trombone
1994-1995
Visiting Scholar and Instructor of Composition at Yonsei University and Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea
REGIONS: alter uniform envelope and timbral characteristic - XHAIN for piano duo; extended vocal techniques - Pedagogy
Piece #1 for six voices
1995-1996
move to Redlands, California
REGIONS: alter uniform envelope and timbral characteristic - Lincoln Shrine for marimba and violin; electroacoustic -
Syale #1 an electronic composition; flute multiphonics, microtonality, voice into flute, flute dynamism, Greek aesthetic
and musical theoretical thought – On Music for flute and viola; Experimental music theater - No!!! for two voices,
drummers and rope climbers
1996-1999
Acoustic and physiologic voice study as a Postdoctoral Fellow through the National Center for Voice and Speech (Ingo Titze,
Director) at the University of Wisconsin, Diane Bless, mentor. Research undertaken to form basis for book on contemporary
vocal peformance techniques The 21st Century Voice, to be published as part of the New Instrumentation series by the University
of California Press. Formal scientific research on reinforced harmonics, [imitated-Tibetan] chant, ingressive airflow phonation,
vocal violence.
REGIONS: palatal mapping, overtone singing, ingressive phonation, chant, etc. - Lingua-Palatal #1 for two voices, Sirens
for four to forty voices, Taffy Twisters for voice and percussion, Azure Suite for soprano and overtone singer, KOSMOS, volumes
one and two pedagogical pieces introducing contemporary vocal performance techniques (#1 on a new mapping of the vocal tract,
#2 on reinforced harmonics), and Friedrich's Comma for two voices; ethnicity - Agwara.Nanga.Wolof for steel pans, African
drums, brass and saxophone and Pakji for wind band with percussion; sound production of wind instruments (including mechanical
organ), multiphonics, airflow divisi, ingressive airflow production and source separation from influence of resonant acoustic
chambers – Apposte Messe for organ, A Holy Person Falls into the Nile as a Pelican for clarinet and horn, and Schreistimme
for bayan; invented instruments - 24 October 1667 for marine trumpet and voice
1999-2000
Move to California to continue research on text at the University of California at San Diego as Visiting Scholar at the
Center for Research in Computing and the Arts; Instructor of Music at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California
REGIONS: electroaoustic music - Wassermann an electronic composition
2000-2001
Move to Europe; composition, workshops, seminars, conferences, residencies, collaborative projects, musical and scientific
voice research, completion of book (The 21st Century Voice)
REGIONS: Indian vocal music - Pyramid of Unas, for orchestra and six voices (in progress); multi-parametric, subgranular,
scalar explorations of instruments and voices; String Quartet no. 1 (in progress), Mamre, for solo violin and Samsara, for
twenty strings; rhythmic complexities using embedded/nested rhythms, 'irrational' meters and expanded sound production examination
- la Criterion, for wind septet
to contact mike edgerton, write:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
|
|
|
|
