| My parents were opera singers. They used to take my sister and I with them to rehearsals when they couldn't get a babysitter. I saw my first full-length opera when I was five (La Boheme). I was in my first opera at seven. Ever since I can remember I've been in and around music/theater. I've written it, composed it, performed it, and directed it.
My education as a performer was fairly traditional. I earned a Bachelors Degree in Music from the University of Iowa then went on to earn a Masters Degree in Music from Yale. I was a singer/actor and only a singer/actor. In the early 80's I began building pieces with a group of artists in Seattle (The New Performance Group). As a result of that work I was asked to join a collective in San Francisco (The George Coates Performance Works) to improvise and develop unusual music/theater pieces. There I met composer Paul Dresher. Paul and I then worked together for the next ten years in The Paul Dresher Ensemble creating a number of pieces, including Slow Fire, Pioneers, and Shelf Life. Paul wrote the music. I wrote the librettos and performed. We were chosen for the Esquire Register as a writing team in 1989. My education as a composer has been unusual. My work with text caught the attention of several choreographers in the San Francisco dance scene. There was an interest in dance/theater in the late 80's. Although I started out creating texts and narratives for various dancers and dance companies (Sarah Shelton Mann, Contraband, The Dance Brigade, Deborah Slater, Margaret Jenkins) I soon was called on to compose scores, as well. One successful score would prompt another until I was something of a fixture in the dance scene. I was honored with Isadora Duncan Awards for three of my scores. My dance work culminated in Woman/Window/Square, an evening length score for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Co. I was also developing solo work for which I wrote the music, including Shoot The Moving Things, Dry Land Divine, and The Idiot Variations. Record producer Lee Townsend approached me about a solo CD of my music; Finding My Way Home was the result (performed with, among others, Bill Frisell and Jerry Granelli). I did two more CD's with Lee: Do The Day Over and Story In Story Out. I wrote my first chamber work The Finsterwald Diaries for the New Performance Group. I later wrote Five or Six Dances for the same group of musicians. Since 2000 I've written and composed four new music/theater works: And God Created Great Whales for the Foundry Theater in New York, Highway Ulysses for American Repertory Theater at Harvard, Horizon for a consortium of University Arts Centers, and Orpheus X again for ART. And God Created Great Whales received an Obie Award for the 2000-2001 season. It was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Highway Ulysses received an Eliot Norton Award in 2003 In the spring of 2005 I was given the Marc Blitzstein Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In February 2006 I performed Idiot Divine, my solo music/theater work at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. Horizon will be staged again in June 2007 at The New York Theater Workshop. Orpheus X will be presented at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2007. |