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Daniel John Plonsey |
Dan Plonsey was born September 1, 1958 in Cleveland, Ohio, grew up in Cleveland Heights, and graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1976. He earned a BA in math and music from Yale University (1980) and an MA in composition from Mills College (1988). He has studied composition with Martin Bresnick, David Lewin, Anthony Braxton, and more briefly, Roscoe Mitchell and Terry Riley. He has written more than 200 works for large and small ensembles. Recent commissions have come from Bang on a Can People's Commissioning Fund, the Berkeley Symphony ("The Dolphins in the Forest" for a series of concerts for children), and New Music Works in Santa Cruz.
Plonsey's music is characterized by a dogged determination to be as un-abstract as possible. Each work is populated by characters rather than by ideas; the ideas are obliged to loiter about in nearby alleys. Most of his music is extremely simple but by no means minimal, rather, it results from the presentation of "those melodies and structural ideas that I find most obvious and inescapable."
In recent years, Plonsey has written primarily for large (8-20 person) ensembles of mixed and unspecified instrumentation, for ensembles of multiple (3-13) saxophones, and he has been writing operas.
Recent Work: Plonsey writes:
``In 1999, I founded the group
Daniel Popsicle
to present my
growing body of large ensemble works for "extremely mixed" instrumentation,
including Balinese gamelan instruments, Turkish saz and cumbus,
Japanese shakuhachi, and shofar.
``Also in 1999, I began a series of operas with librettist Paul Schick,
premiering the first 6 scenes of
Sunburst
on March 19, 2000, at the
OPUS415 No.5 Bay Area New Music Marathon.
``I have written a large body of music for multiple saxophones, first, as co-leader of the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet, then for myself (overdubbed up to 13 times) for two solo CDs, Ivory Bill (Music & Arts) and Open Door And Desire (New Tone). Some of this music, adapted for saxophone sextet, toured Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, Connecticut and Massechusetts in February and March, 2001. On this tour, entitled Bird Constructions and Musics, I was re-united with Chris Jonas and Randy McKean of the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet, with whom I have worked for 12 years or so. Chris and I developed what we called Line Duets, combining improvisations, compositions and drawing (upon a giant 11' x 7' canvas), and in these performances the process was extended to include the construction of a jagged structure which could enclose the ensemble, and upon which drawings, paintings and projections were made - some building while others played.
``Also in February, I performed four concerts in Holland of music for winds, bass and percussion, inspired by compositions of Sun Ra, with Peter van Bergen, Steve Horowitz, Joost Buis, Jim Meneses and Jim Bove.
``In January 2001, I recorded in a tentet and sax quartet of music by Anthony Braxton, sessions led by Braxton, released as a 4-CD set June 25, 2002. In December, 2003, the group was reunited for a concert in San Francisco, and several days in studio, during which enough music was recorded for either a 6-CD set, or more likely, one DVD.
``In 2002, I was chosen for New Langton Arts' `Bay Area Awards Show,' and Daniel Popsicle performed 32 of my smallest new works, plus a second opera-in-progress (with Paul Schick), AMARAMA. A chamber version of Daniel Popsicles played another set of short pieces on the wonderful ``Garden of Memory'' concert, June 21, curated by New Music Bay Area. On September 30, a 20-person Daniel Popsicle presented two sets of music at Oakland's premiere jazz club, Yoshi's.''
``In 2003, I wrote and premiered a Concerto for Electric Guitar and Toy Orchestra for the wonderful guitarist Fred Frith and the fantastic Toychestra." This work was recorded, and released in May, 2004. Also released in 2004 was Moving About, Humming, Still Our Flowers are Blooming, Under the Old Portcullis, the first (hour-long) installment of Plonsey's Kingdoms Diptych. Part 2, the two-hour-long Wise King Taken by the Foolish One, is all ready to be pressed, and should be available in summer of 2005.
Currently (latest update: March 21, 2005), Plonsey is rehearsing and recording Simple Music Series 1: The Color Pieces (77 pieces and counting) with members of Daniel Popsicle (e-mail dan@plonsey.com for information on being part of this recording project). Two pieces of Simple Music Series 3: Music of Failure, Failure of Music have also been recorded, and composition of Series 2: NEW Music is underway. Plonsey also has various other projects in the works.
Plonsey performs his own music and the music of others infrequently enough in the Bay Area and beyond in a wide variety of contexts, including, most recently, John Shiurba's 5x5, TriAxium West: a cooperative group devoted to the music of Anthony Braxton, John Schott's Diglossia ensemble (the CD Shuffle Play documents this group), Ben Goldberg's Brainchild, and Eugene Chadbourne's Insect & Western.
In the less recent past, Plonsey was the resident composer and chief librettist for El Cerrito's Disaster Opera Theatre. (13 one-hour operas 1994-99), the co-founder of two defunct composers' collectives (New Haven's Sheep's Clothing and the Bay Area's Composers' Cafeteria, the journal Freeway (and co-editor), and the weekly Beanbender's creative music concert series in Berkeley (weekly from March, 1995-1999, ongoing occasionally).
Inspired by Sun Ra and Charles Ives, most of Plonsey's compositions embody a drama of conflict: at least two ideas, one sensible and one absurd, set in motion together or against one another. Other compositions, surreal by nature, required the invention of whole imaginary worlds. His most recent works are a celebration of being out of step with nearly everything. ``My music clearly fails to meet the standards of either jazz nor classical. It draws upon all of my weaknesses at least as much as upon my strengths.''
Plonsey also teaches math at Berkeley High, and spends a lot of time with his wife, Mantra, and their two sons, Cleveland and Mischa.
More than 200 pieces for ensembles of various sizes, including three string quartets, a set of 144 one-page piano pieces, four pieces for orchestra, and bushels of others for whoever was around. Most recently, three very long pieces (4 hours total) for large ensemble: Baseball Season, and the Kingdoms Diptych: Moving About, Humming, Still Our Flowers are Blooming, Under the Old Portcullis and Wise King Taken by the Foolish One; a set of 23 short marches for the Santa Cruz New Music Works; four sets of ~15 pieces each for Daniel Popsicle (of which most of the first comprise the CDR: Music of El Cerrito Volume 1), and most of the third, the CDR Daniel Popsicle: "Jazz" at Yoshi's (Music of El Cerrito Volume 8)); 18 short pieces for 8-10-piece ``jazz'' ensemble; the above-mentioned Sunburst; an instrumental-opera version of Hamlet; a dozen or so structured improvisations for large and small groups; and at least 20 pieces for solo and multiple saxophones (recorded on Ivory Bil and Open Door And Desire.
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Dan Plonsey dan@plonsey.com |
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