CCi Artists
DOUG GEERS
Doug
Geers began composing music with computers shortly after his Dad brought
home an Atari 800 in 1983. Since then, he has used technology in nearly
all of his works, to write with the sounds of kitchen utensils, soda
cans, answering machine messages, found 8mm film clips, blasts of white
noise, recordings of radio talk shows and cable TV shopping networks,
and, oddly enough, even human voices and traditional musical instruments.
He now focuses on composing for instruments with live electronics, often
in multimedia contexts--such as 2002’s Gilgamesh, a 70-minute theatrical
concerto.
Praised for its “shimmering electronic textures" (Kyle Gann,
Village Voice), and described as "fascinating... virtuosic... beautifully
eerie" (Jim Lowe, Montpelier Times-Argus), Doug’s music is
characterized by humor, subtle harmonic motion, and theatrical playfulness.
It also travels well, hopping and bopping all over the globe from ICMC
(Singapore), Bourges Synthese (France), and ISCM World Music Days (Slovenia),
to performances in Miami (NODUS ensemble), San Diego (NWEAMO/SEAMUS),
and New York City (Thru the Walls).
Awards and grants for Doug’s work include a Fulbright scholarship,
a Composers Commissioning Project prize from the American Composers Forum,
a Dynamic Duos commission from Composers Collaborative, the 2000 Roth-Thomson
award, and others from ASCAP, Meet the Composer, der Hochschule für
Musik und Theater Wintertur (Switzerland), the Experimentalstudio der
Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung (Germany), the Mellon Foundation. He currently
teaches music composition and electronic music at the University of Minnesota
(Minneapolis), and has CDs available on the Innova, SEAMUS, and EMC labels.
Geers says: "For me, life, both artistically and in a wider sense,
is an exciting, unpredictable journey. I enjoy new challenges, I love
to interact with others, and in my music I try to communicate some of
the joys and sorrows I have witnessed and experienced thus far. From
the romance and teenage angst of the pop songs I wrote in high school
to my multimedia violin concerto, I have always tried in my music to
remain true to myself and my desire to convey ideas and feelings to others.
I believe that it is OK to like both Iannis Xenakis and Cole Porter,
for instance, without feeling awkward about it, and I enjoy stepping
over traditional boundries in every piece I write."
On April 28 & 29, 2004, CCi presents the first performances of Douglas
Geers and Guillermo Castro's off-off-off elector-acoustic music theater
work, How I Learned to Draw a Sheep, at The Cornelia Street Cafe. Box
office information at Upcoming Events.
Official Site: http://www.music.columbia.edu/~geersde
Affiliation: ASCAP
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Artists
Last Update 03/15/2007
