David Behrman

David Behrman, 2012

David Behrman (born August 16, 1937 in Salzburg ) is an American composer, sound and installation artist, music teacher and pioneer of computer music.

Behrman studied with Wallingford Riegger at Harvard University until 1959 and continued his training in Europe from 1959 to 1960 with Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen . In the 1960s he worked for Columbia Records , where he produced the first recordings of works by Terry Riley ( In C , Rainbow in Curved Air ), Robert Ashleys , John Cages , Mauricio Kagels , Alvin Luciers , Richard Maxfields , in the Music of Our Time series , Gordon Mummas , Pauline Oliveros ', Henri Pousseurs, Steve Reichs , David Tudors and Christian Wolffs .

With Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma he founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966 , which had numerous appearances in North America and Europe until 1976. From 1967 he worked with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company , for which he composed pieces such as Walkaround Time (1968), Rebus (1976), Pictures (1984) and EyeSpace (2007) and between 1970 and 1976 and occasionally in later years as a composer and Musician toured. (2007). From 2004 to 2011 he was co-director of the company's music committee alongside Christian Wolff, Takehisa Kosugi and John King .

From 1975 to 1980, Behrman was co-director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College , where he taught again as a visiting professor in 1999. He has also taught at the California Institute of the Arts , Rutgers University , Bard College , Ohio State University, and the Technical University of Berlin .

In addition to compositions for performance in concerts, Behrman also created sound and multimedia installations for various occasions and locations. His works have been performed by musicians such as Joan La Barbara , Eric Barsness , Thomas Buckner , Rhys Chatham , Jon Gibson , Conrad Harris , Barbara Held , Takehisa Kosugi , Ben Neill , Maggi Payne , Ralph Samuelson , Kazue Sawaii , Gene Tyranny and Peter Zummo . Installations were created in collaboration with Robert Watts and Bob Diamond ( Cloud Music , 1979, now in the collection of the Smithonian American Museum ), Paul DeMarinis ( Sound Fountain , 1982), George Lewis ( A Map of the Know World and Algorithmes and Kalimba , 1986 -87); further installations are In Thin Air (1997), Pen Light (2002) and View Finder (2002–2005). The exhibition venues included the Parochialkirche Berlin , the LaSuen Art Gallery at Stanford University , the Whitney Museum of American Art , the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Hudson River Museum , the DeCordova Museum , the Ars Electronica in Linz and the Wissenschafts- und Technical museum in La Villette (Paris).

Web link

• Homepage of David Behrman

swell

• Lovely Music Ltd. - David Behrman
• Berliner Festspiele - Archive - David Behrman
• Larry Austin, Douglas Kahn, Nilendra Gurusinghe: Source: Music of the Avant-garde, 1966–1973 , University of California Press, 2011, ISBN 9780520257481 , p. 108