| MP3s: The Cyprosyrian Girl (Ancient Greek Music Impressions)
Aristophanes
Clouds
Extract from String Quartet # 3 (1988)
Discography
1989
The Cud Scouts, Suddenly It's the Cud Scouts.
1995
Interruptus,
Umbrella Man (Cold Feet Publishing)
1996
The Bête-Noires, The Dano Tapes (basement tapes) and
Live at Lighthouse (farewell concert at Lightouse Roasters, Seattle).
1996
Sheryl Wiser, Month of Saints.
1999
Cud Scouts tracks included in The
Aspen Sampler, Volume 1 (Flying Dogs Records, Aspen CO)
2000 The Bigger the God, ...And
the Ugly.
2002 "Aristophanes Clouds: A Musical
Reconstruction" (paper and compact disc), in E. Hickmann and
R. Eichmann (ed.), Archäologie früher Klangerzeugung und
Tonordnungen. Serie Studien zur Musikarchäologie, Orient-Archäologie (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Berlin, Orient-Abteilung, 2002).
A full 2-disc recording is also available: MP3s
are available here.
2002
Sly Moonbeast, The Sensations of Tone (the best of my own songs
from 1985-2003, newly re-recorded).
2004
Susanna Rühling and
Musica Romana records the Parabasis from Clouds.
2004
Audio demonstrations for Hearing
Greek Microtones included on CD accompanying conference volume. 2006 Vanity-pressing of The Cyprosyrian Girl. Tracks previewed at International Study Group for Music Archaeology in Berlin ('Beyond the Fragments'). 2007 Tracks from Cyprosyrian Girl played on Italian national radio by Emiliano di Castro 2008 Tracks from Cyprosyrian Girl featured on NPR's Studio 360 in story produced by Richard Paul.

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Music
My
first true love, music remains the driving force behind the various activities
of my checkered career, which has moved between composition, performance
and music archaeology:
1975 Mother forces to begin piano lessons
1976-1978 Mother forces to continue piano lessons.
1979 Organ Lessons.
1980 First synthesizer (Octave-Plateau
Cat)
1981 Begin practicing piano 8-10 hours/day; grades drop (except
Latin); Berklee College of Music Summer
Program
1981-83 Choral accompanist, Falmouth High School
1982-3 Keyboards, Falmouth High Stage Band; buy Yamaha
SK-30 Symphonic Ensemble) discover Stravinsky, Poulenc
1983 Bomb piano auditions at Eastman, Oberlin, Indiana; vow never
to practice again.
1983 Keyboards, The Penetrators (Falmouth, Mass.)
1983 Begin composing
1984 Hideous semester at Berklee
College of Music; purchase four-track cassette recorder (Tascam 144);
Keyboards in the U-Turns with highschool friends Paul
Hosom, Steve Shepherd, Josh Phillips, Aaron Paycek (Falmouth, Mass.)
1984 Accepted to composition department of New
England Conservatory of Music; buy first ARP
2600 ($ 250!); begin composing chamber music, electronic music, and
writing songs (also collaborating with Pierre
Roy and Rob McCall).
1985 Buy first accordion; busk with Pierre
Roy (oboe) in Boston T.
1985-88 Work in NEC Audio Department, archiving and editing
1986-87 Member MIT Media Lab,
composing with Barry
Vercoe's CSound.
1986-88 Work at WGBH public radio as production intern
1987-88 Contrabass balalaika and accordion with the Verba balalaika
ensemble, John Bardash, director (Boston); brief stint playing keyboards
with Talking
to Animals, Boston (n.b. I did not play on the record reviewed in
the link).
1988 Aspen Music Festival,
composition; meet Steve Skinner,
Dead Bob and other local musicians
1988 Move to NYC for ill-fated--nay, disastrous--internship at
New England Digital Corporation
(Synclavier)
1989 Return to Aspen to play in Cud
Scouts with Steve Skinner,
Dead Bob, Bruce MacCalister, and Habib; record Suddenly its the Cud
Scouts.
1989 Busk in England, Ireland, France and Spain, on mandolin with
old friend Chris Carlson, guitar; freak appearance on BBC radio
1990 Move to Seattle, play with Cud Scouts briefly before disbanding;
play accordion with Spirit Darts for two years with members of the UW
ethnomusicology department
1991-94 Write user manual for the SoftSplice
digital audio efitor (Digital
Expressions, Inc., Bellevue, WA, now defunct); receive one free; buy
second ARP 2600 (also
$250!), Kurzweil K2000; meet Thomas Dolby
1992 Give piano lessons at Seattle Hebrew Academy
1993-95 Play accordion in SubMed with Steve Brown (mandolin), intensive
restaraunt, club and functions work, appear in Eddie Bauer catalogue (!);
master the left hand buttons finally; play accordion on Sheryl
Wiser's Month of Saints; film score for experimental short,
Over the Rainbow, directed by Patty Mulcahy.
1995-96 Accordion in The Bête-Noires, cocktail and cafe
concert band with Tor
Midtskog (guitar) and Dan Occhipinti (a.k.a. Hurrican Dano); regular
club work
1995-96 Umbrella
Man album sessions with Interruptus in Santa Barbara; orchestrations,
conducting and keyboards for Steve Skinner's Umbrella Man
rock opera, Aspen Colorado
1996 Move to England with new wife, Amanda Castleman, to begin
research on ancient Greek and Mesopotamian music; Amanda buys me beautiful
1880s Bechstein upright piano for christmas, now being fully restored.
1996-97Writing music reviews for The Gist magazine (Oxford);
revival of Umbrella
Man.
1998-2000 Meet David Cowles Hamar; begin gigging with The
Bigger the God, local heroes in the Oxford music scene, release ...And the Ugly.
I'm very proud of this record. Researcher for Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, England), updating material
for the second edition
1998 Papyrological colloquium on Philodemus De musica, organized
by the Phildemus
Project in Chantilly, France
1999 First musical reconstruction of ancient Greek drama, Aeschylus'
Choephori, for London
Festival of Greek Drama; incidental music for Arion Theatre production
of A Midsummer Night's Dream; Frankfort fellowship at Warburg
Institute, London
2000 Musical reconstruction of Aristophanes'
Clouds for Edinburgh Fringe Festival,
brilliantly directed by childhood friend Dan
Robb; first invitation to International Study
Group for Music Archaeology (Ellen Hickmann, Director); playing Romanian
folk music with Giles Hogben, Susan
Coleman, and Luke Barlow.
2000-2002 Rome Prize,
American Academy in Rome;
finish PhD thesis, Terpander: The Invention of
Music in the Orientalizing Period.
2001 The famous Casino Night at AAR, featuring debut of The King
Mixers (with Carlos
Noreña, Craig
Brandt, Michael Ebner, Jack Hill, John Bailey, with guests Richard
Taransky, Donald
Lipski, Tamara Birdsall, Wendy Heller, Karen Klaiber, Paul Garfinkle);
revival of Clouds at AAR and Museo Nazionale,
Palazzo Altemps, in conjunction with the English
Theatre of Rome (Gaby Ford)
2002 Interviews and documentation of Romanian street musicians
in Rome (with Maria Craciun), for Arrivederci
Romania
2002-2003 Broneer and CAORC fellowships for
research on musical iconography of Greece, Cyprus, Phrygia and Lydia;
buy the amazing Reaktor virtual modular softsynth, Digital Performer,
develop the Virtual Lyre. Realizations
of the Athenaeus Paian and Mesomedes Hymn to Nemesis.
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