Peter Zummo | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Born | 1948 |
Origin | Cleveland, Ohio, United States |
Genres | |
Occupation(s) | Musician, composer |
Peter Zummo is an American composer and trombonist. [1] [2] [3] He has been described as "an important exponent of the American contemporary classical tradition." He has called his own work "minimalism plus a whole lot more." [4] [5]
Since 1967, Zummo's compositions exploring rock, jazz, new music, electronic music, disco, punk, and world music have been presented in venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City Center, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, [6] Roulette, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, among many others in New York City. [4] He has appeared in additional venues across the country and worldwide, including Café Oto [7] and King's Place [8] [9] in London, KRAAK Festival [10] in Brussels, and Rewire Festival [11] in The Hague.
The website of the music magazine Pitchfork called Zummo's music “the sound of sublimity…that sends shivers down the nervous system,” and in an interview with The Quietus, Scottish deejay JD Twitch (Keith McIvor) characterized Zummo's work as “sheer bliss.” [12] [13]
In the British culture blog "The Ransom Note," Tim Wilson wrote that some of Zummo's "most familiar" music was created with cellist Arthur Russell. [14] Zummo played on most of Russell's recordings and produced several of them. [15] [12] According to a review of their collaboration in The New Yorker , “phrases emerge and wrap around each other: Peter Zummo’s gorgeous trombone motif, Russell’s pizzicato cello theme, and a growing drone of loud, dissonant guitars…When the smoke clears, genre is just a memory.” [16]
Russell, in turn, played often for Zummo, notably on the Bessie Award–winning composition Lateral Pass, created for a dance by choreographer Trisha Brown, with a stage set by artist Nancy Graves. [17] In 2014, Foom Music, in London, released an original recording of this 1985 piece. Said Piccadilly Records, the recording demonstrated that “Zummo’s signature trombone style, renowned for its rich and soothing tone, has become one of the most beloved features of Russell’s celebrated sound." [18]
In 2014, Mikhail Barishnikov's Baryshnikov Arts Center, in New York City, awarded Zummo and bass player Ernie Brooks a residency for the creation of new work. [19] Additional support over the years has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and other funders. [4]
Zummo appears as himself in Jonathan Demme's Accumulation with Talking Plus Water Motor, a film featuring Trisha Brown, [20] and in Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell , a documentary by Matt Wolf. [21] His reflections on working with Russell can be heard in a Roulette Intermedium interview. [22] Zummo contributed to the score of Tramas, Italian director Augusto Contento's [23] cinematic portrait of São Paulo, Brazil, worked with artist Donald Judd to realize a work accompanying Trisha Brown's choreography for Newark, and played for Andrei Șerban–Liz Swados collaborations, including Fragments of a Greek Trilogy. [24] [25] [26]
Zummo performs for other bands and bandleaders, including the Lounge Lizards, Gods and Monsters, Stephen Gaboury’s B-Twist Orchestra for the dance company Ballets with a Twist, Go: Organic Orchestra, [27] Tilt Brass, [28] Downtown Ensemble, [29] Flexible Orchestra, [30] The Necessaries, [31] and Dinosaur L. He has also played in units put together by composers David Behrman, Philip Corner, Guy De Bièvre, Tom Hamilton, [32] William Hellerman, [33] Annea Lockwood, Jackson MacLow, Ben Neill, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Vernon Reid, Steve Swell, Yasunao Tone, Lise Vachon, [34] Yoshi Wada, and others. [4] [1] [35] Zummo performed on Teo Macero’s Fusion, which featured both the Lounge Lizards and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. [36]
In addition to composing innumerable works for groups he has put together himself, Zummo has created compositions for others. Blue Headlights was written for live performance by New York Virtuoso Singers in 2023. [37] [38] In 2018, Italian musician and conductor Luciano Chessa performed Think Quick [39] in Australia. [39] Also that year, Second Spring, a movie by British director Andy Kelleher, premiered with a score by Zummo. [40] In 1995, Guy Klucevsek's record Ain’t Nothin’ But A Polka Band featured Zummo's (the) Who Stole the Polka? [41] . [42]
After Zummo's early classical-music education in his hometown, Cleveland, Ohio, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and composition at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. [43] [44] There he studied with Alvin Lucier, Ken McIntyre, Clifford Thornton, Daoud Haroon, [45] Dick Griffin, and Sam Rivers, among others. [4] [1] After Wesleyan, Zummo moved to New York City, where he continued trombone studies with Carmine Caruso [46] and Roswell Rudd and sought out the influences of James Fulkerson and Stuart Dempster. [4] [35]
In New York City, Zummo developed extended techniques for the trombone and other instruments and created many works, including numerous pieces with his wife, then-choreographer and dancer Stephanie Woodard. For several years, he wrote music and performance reviews in the SoHo Weekly News . [14] For a 2006 article by “Blue” Gene Tyranny in Dram, Zummo described his compositional approach as being about “persons not instruments,” elaborating that he provides “material for musicians and sufficient instructions, so they don’t make arbitrary but rather logical or heartfelt decisions.” His work, Zummo continued, thus “engenders a social situation reflecting modern society.” [4]
Zummo has been a visiting artist at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Dance de Paris, and the Conservatory of Amsterdam, and Wesleyan University, among others. He was senior faculty advisor with the New York Arts Program, a New York City-based project of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Great Lakes Colleges Association, and artistic director of The Loris Bend Foundation, a nonprofit presenter of music, dance, and media. [47] [4]
Philip Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically.
Charles Arthur Russell Jr. was an American cellist, composer, producer, singer, and musician from Iowa, whose work spanned a disparate range of styles. After studying contemporary composition and Indian classical music in California, Russell relocated to New York City in the mid-1970s, where he became involved with both Lower Manhattan's avant-garde community and the city's burgeoning disco scene. His eclectic music was often marked by adventurous production choices and his distinctive voice.
Guy Klucevsek is an American-born accordionist and composer. Klucevsek is one of relatively few accordion players active in new music, jazz and free improvisation.
Barb Jungr is an English singer, songwriter and theatre writer, who has recorded versions of songs by Bob Dylan, Sting, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen.
Explosions-Polka, Op. 43, is a polka written by Johann Strauss II in 1847. The title was inspired by a discovery of guncotton or nitrocellulose by German scientist Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1840. The Viennese press eagerly reported this discovery many years later in 1846, describing many products that can then be made 'explosive'.
"You Are My Sunshine" is an American standard of Old-time and Country music and one of the official state songs of Louisiana. Its original writer is disputed. According to the performance rights organisation BMI, by the year 2000 the song had been recorded by over 350 artists and translated into 30 languages.
Walter Gibbons was an American record producer, early disco DJ, and remixer. He helped pioneer the remix and 12" single in America, and was among the most influential New York DJs of the 1970s.
John Serry Sr. was an American concert accordionist, arranger, composer, organist, and educator. He performed on the CBS Radio and Television networks and contributed to Voice of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives during the Golden Age of Radio. He also concertized on the accordion as a member of several orchestras and jazz ensembles for nearly forty years between the 1930s and 1960s.
Electronic dance music (EDM) is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. Since its inception EDM has expanded to include a wide range of subgenres.
Peter Laurence Gordon is an American saxophonist, clarinetist, pianist and experimental composer, whose influences include jazz, disco, funk, rock, opera, classical and world music. He has released several albums and composed scores for film and theater, and he has also toured and re-interpreted the music of Arthur Russell, on whose compositions he played, as well as that of Robert Ashley.
Love of Life Orchestra (LOLO) is an experimental music group formed by Peter Gordon in New York in April 1977. The band is associated with the 1970s New York downtown music scene.
The Gallery was a disco in SoHo, Manhattan which was opened in February 1972 by disc jockey Nicky Siano and his older brother Joe Siano. The first location of The Gallery, located on 132 West 22nd Street, closed in July 1974. It reopened in November 1974 at 172 Mercer and Houston Streets and closed in October 1977. Famed DJs Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles both worked at the club, but not at the DJ booth. Grace Jones and Loleatta Holloway both made their debut performances at The Gallery.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, CC is a Canadian conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was the principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2018.
Boogie is a rhythm and blues genre of electronic dance music with close ties to the post-disco style, that first emerged in the United States during the late 1970s to mid-1980s. The sound of boogie is defined by bridging acoustic and electronic musical instruments with emphasis on vocals and miscellaneous effects. It later evolved into electro and house music.
Calling Out of Context is a compilation album of songs written and recorded by experimental musician Arthur Russell. It was released on March 16, 2004 by Audika Records in the United States and by Rough Trade Records in the United Kingdom. Nearly all of the songs included on Calling Out of Context had never been previously released in any form.
Lise Davidsen is a Norwegian opera singer, known as a lyric dramatic soprano. She came to prominence after winning the Operalia competition in London in 2015.
24→24 Music is a 1981 album by Dinosaur L, the disco project of American musician Arthur Russell. Enlisting a variety of musicians, Russell recorded the album in 1979 primarily at Blank Tapes studio in New York. It was released on Sleeping Bag Records, the label started by Russell and Will Socolov, and accompanied by the single "Go Bang! #5."
Tower of Meaning is a 1983 instrumental album by American composer Arthur Russell, originally released on Philip Glass's Chatham Square label. It consists of orchestral pieces intended for theatrical use, recorded in 1981 and conducted by Julius Eastman.
Diamond Violence is the tenth album by Canadian music artist Marker Starling, released in early 2023. A fusion of funk, soul and indie pop, it was produced by Zack G., who worked on previous projects by Cummings, as well as with Ben Gunning. Featured on the album is vocal work by Dorothea Paas and trombone by the legendary Arthur Russell collaborator Peter Zummo.