Mark So

Mark So (born June 14, 1978 in Syracuse, NY) is an American composer[1] and also performer (mainly as pianist) of experimental music active in Los Angeles, CA. His works, which currently number over 500, pursue the unforeseen in reduced scenarios of musical choice and action, while exploring the space and setting of music in new ways. Mostly text-based and influenced by New York School aesthetics, Fluxus, and the Wandelweiser[2] composers collective, his music explores varied and open "theaters" of the sensible by formalizing engagements with faint, passing subtleties of continuity and arrangement (time and harmony) that often demand great attention, through changing experiences of silence. As critic Petra Hedler writes: "Mark So strongly embraces the phenomenon of the just barely audible, taking up a broad palette of sound-producing devices (including glasses, stones)."[3] Tending to write in expansive series, major groupings of pieces include the blind documents[4] for field recordings and instruments, the readings series of scenarios involving the reading of text, a group of empires defining narrow yet indeterminate situations of potential harmony, numerous landscapes and atmospheres, dozens of pieces based upon the spellings of individual names, and more than 200 compositions arising from poems by John Ashbery. His scores are performed frequently in the United States and in Europe.[5]

Musical collaborators include G. Douglas Barrett, Jason Brogan, Madison Brookshire, Johnny Chang, Adam Fong, Kerstin Fuchs, Francesco Gagliardi, Mari Garrett, Christa Graf, Jason Grier, Orin Hildestad, Julia Holter, Travis Just, Lewis Keller, Christian Kesten, Joseph Kudirka, Catherine Lamb, Eileen Myles, James Orsher, Adam Overton, Michael Pisaro, Mike Richard, Sam Sfirri, Elyssa Shalla, Taylan Susam, Christine Tavolacci, Luke Thomas Taylor, Tashi Wada, Manfred Werder, Michael Winter, Harris Wulfson,[6] István Zelenka; the ensembles Maulwerker,[7] incidental music, object collection, Society of Automatic Music Notators,[8][9] The Dog Star Orchestra,[10] Guthrie & Streb (cellist April Guthrie and violist Cassia Streb),[11] The MicroScore Project (violinist Johnny Chang and cellist Jessica Catron), the Charleston, SC, New Music Collective, and the folds experimental music and performance workshop;[12] the Los Angeles-area venues the wulf.,[13] Cold Storage,[14] eighteen-thirty,[15] Machine Project,[16] REDCAT, Sea & Space Explorations,[17][18][19] Dangerous Curve, and il corral; the New York-area venues LISTEN/SPACE, music space, and CiNE Studio Space; and the international festivals Wandelweiser Festspiel (Düsseldorf, Germany), MicroFest (Los Angeles), Klangkunstklang 2009 (Aarau, Switzerland), ICMC 2008[20], the annual Dog Star Orchestra[21] (Los Angeles) and incidental music (Zürich, Switzerland) concert series, and the experimental music recordings web series calculations.

So frequently performs in works from the experimental tradition (often premieres), including those by Antoine Beuger, G. Douglas Barrett, George Brecht, Jason Brogan, Earle Brown, John Cage, Johnny Chang, Morton Feldman, Adam Fong, Jürg Frey, Mari Garrett, Stina Hanson, Eva-Maria Houben, Carlo Inderhees, Travis Just, Lewis Keller, David Kendall, Christian Kesten, Joseph Kudirka, Catherine Lamb, Radu Malfatti, Elana Mann, James Orsher, Adam Overton, Michael Pisaro, Mike Richard, Felix Salazar, James Saunders, Sam Sfirri, Kunsu Shim, Yuji Takahashi, Luke Thomas Taylor, James Tenney, Jason Thomas, Manfred Werder, Michael Winter, Christian Wolff, Harris Wulfson, Steven Yi, La Monte Young, István Zelenka and many of his own.

On July 10, 2006, So collaborated with composer James Orsher, artist Michael Parker of Routes and Methods and 16 area musicians in realizing a notable 3-hour performance of James Tenney's In a large, open space (1994) at the 40,000 square foot Cold Storage art facility in downtown Los Angeles.[22]

A graduate of Pomona College (BA 2000) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA 2006), So's composition teachers have included Michael Pisaro, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, Stephen "Lucky" Mosko, Sara Roberts, Thomas Flaherty and Annetta Kaplan.

In Fall 2007, the week-long retrospective mark so: late early works took place at UC Santa Barbara and environs, and featured 12 works for various performers/instrumentation, diverse locations (many of them outdoors), and sometimes extreme durations (up to 6 hours).[23] In 2007-8, So's article "nearing/hearing" appeared in Everybody Loves Difficult Music (the companion volume to the series Everybody Loves Difficult Music and You Too Can Play Difficult Music at Machine Project)[24] as well as The Open Space Magazine. In 2009, So published BANGS, a book experimentally detailing Manfred Werder's ongoing performance (begun in August, 2006) of So's 2005 composition BANGS [to Manfred Werder], including the score, correspondence between the two composers over the course of the realization, reflection upon the process, and photographs of salient incidents.

External links

• http://uploaddownloadperform.net/MarkSo/Index
• http://www.soundcommons.org/Members/MarkSo
• http://www.soundclick.com/markso
• http://www.taosdaily.com/index.php?fuseaction=home.viewarticle&article_id=1865
• http://www.montanaartistsrefuge.org/formerartists/fa_2005.htm