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David Behrman

2019 Season


Pauline Kim Harris and David Behrman performed View Finder, a piece by Behrman that can be realized by two players — one operating software on a laptop and the other playing an acoustic instrument whose sounds are intermingled with the electronically-generated ones. The piece provides situations for the performers to explore rather than a fixed composition with instructions to be followed. View Finder has a lengthy history — it originated more than 40 years ago and has been evolving slowly during the past decades.

David Behrman has been active as a composer and artist since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations as well as compositions for performance in concerts. My Dear Siegfried, Leapday Night, On the Other Ocean, Interspecies Smalltalk and Open Space with Brass are among Behrman’s works for soloists and ensembles. Among his sound and multimedia installations are Cloud Music (a collaboration with Robert Watts and Bob Diamond); Pen Light (2002), and View Finder (2005.) Cloud Music was acquired (2013) into the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. Sonic Arts performed extensively in North America and Europe from 1966 till 1976. He was co-director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College from 1975 to 1980. Over a period of several decades Behrman was associated as composer / performer with the Cunningham Dance Company and received commissions to compose music for several of the repertory dances. The first of those, “Walkaround Time” from 1968, was revised and restaged in 2017 for the Paris Opera Ballet. During the Sixties and Seventies he assisted John Cage and David Tudor with several projects, among them 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering (EAT) in 1966. Behrman has received grants, commissions and residencies from various sources, among them the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the DAAD, the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Japan / United States Friendship Commission. In 2016 he held the Inge Maren Otto composer’s fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.

Pauline Kim Harris is a violinist and composer, prolific in the classical to the experimental/avant-garde. A frequent guest with New York City’s leading new music ensembles, she has also toured internationally with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Pauline serves as Music Director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and has performed as violin soloist for choreographer Pam Tanowitz and David Parker of The Bang Group. As a curator, she co-produced Drawing Sounds II, with husband, Conrad Harris at the Drawing Center, Petr Kotik @75 at (le) poisson rouge and continues as co-curator of Carnegie Hill Concerts, a chamber music series committed to new music. Her violin duo, String Noise released their freshman album “The Book of Strange Positions” on Northern Spy Records in 2015 and can also be heard on Dymaxion Groove Records, Cold Blue Music and more. Pauline has discovered an equal passion for composing as performing and is thrilled to be a resident fellow this spring at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Commissioned by the St. George’s Choral Society her piece for organ, choir, cello and soprano, “When We Were” was premiered in 2016. She is currently making a new work for String Noise and Syrinx (acoustic synthesizer) “100 Thimbles in a Box” to be premiered on the Interpretations Series at Roulette on June 6, which will also include new works for String Noise by Sam Yulsman, Jessie Cox and George Lewis. A collection of even more new works will be presented July 9-13 on her first residency at The Stone and look out for her debut solo album on Sono Luminus Label later this summer. Fun fact: Pauline was in the final masterclass of Jascha Heifetz.

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