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Concerts by Composers: Arnold Dreyblatt
Works Performed or Excerpted:
1. “Excerpt” - Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings
Arnold Dreyblatt
Among the second generation of New York minimal composers, Arnold Dreyblatt has charted his own unique course in composition and music performance. He has invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning. Often characterized as the most rock-oriented of American minimalists, Dreyblatt has cultivated a strong underground fan base for his transcendental and ecstatic music with his "Orchestra of Excited Strings".
Arnold Dreyblatt's compositions have been recorded for such leading avant-garde music labels as Hat Hut, Tzadik, Table of Elements and Cantaloupe. The New York native studied film and video at SUNY with Woody and Steina Vasulka, and earned his masters from the Institute for Media Studies at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo. In the mid-'70s, he studied composition with Pauline Oliveros and LaMonte Young, then with Alvin Lucier while completing his masters in composition, completed in 1982. By that time, Dreyblatt had already been directing his own music ensemble, the Orchestra of Excited Strings, for three years. In 1984, he moved to Europe where, in addition to composing, he began to work in performance and the visual arts. He has received numerous grants, stipends and commissions including the Philip Morris Art Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art and from the Irish Arts Council. Musicians and Ensembles which have performed his music include the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Pellegrini Quartet, Jim O'Rourke, and the Crash Ensemble, Dublin and the band Megafaun. Dreyblatt has been a guest composer at Amsterdam's STEIM, Berlin's Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Music Gallery, Toronto, Austin New Music Ensemble, etc.
Arnold Dreyblatt on the Experimental Intermedia Series
“My first ensemble, "The Orchestra of Excited Strings" was formed for this concert at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Phill Niblock was a tremendous help to me during the late seventies as I struggled to find my voice and it was not accidental that the first performance by the Orchestra should have taken place at his space. With composer Peter Phillips (brother of Barre Phillips) as “concert master”, the first Orchestra of Excited Strings included two basses with excited strings (one with an extended neck), the premiere of the “Midget Upright Princess Pianoforte” (restrung with unwound wire and excited with feltless wood hammers), and a Hurdy Gurdy.”-Arnold Dreyblatt 2011
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