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.
2007 The Cyprosyrian Girl is now available. Selections should also appear on CD accompanying paper 'Realizations in Ancient Greek Music: Beyond the Fragments', in Hickmann, E./Eichmann, R./Both, A. A. (eds.), Serie Studien zur Musikarchäologie 6 (Rahden, 2008).
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 Philodemus
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.
MP3s:
Spotted Snakes (2005)