John Oswald

composer

Oswald is currently fabricating A0, a one note electroacousmatic composition, entailing some research in the perception of sonic morphs. He¹s about to begin working with Shauna Rolston, Peggy Baker, and Tedd Robinson on a new stage work. He just composed a Concerto for Wired Conductor and Orchestra, which premiered at Boston Symphony Hall in May. He designed the soundtrack and system for Stress, an eight-screen movie by Bruce Mau, showing at the Museum of Technology in Vienna this past summer. A new piece entitled Oswald¹s First Piano Concerto by Tchaikovsky, (as suggested by Michael Snow) was recently premiered in Vancouver by Paul Plimley and the CBC orchestra. Last season he composed a score for the National Ballet of Canada for orchestra, robot piano and the disembodied singing voice of Glenn Gould. For the past year he has been creating a database of photo portraits for a series of Moving Stills. One of his plunderphonie video/photo collages was shown at the Royal Festival Hall Hayward Gallery in London last year and was immediately sold as a gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Of recent works, he wrote, directed and produced a radio play in four interwoven languages (Brazilian, Dutch, English & German); wrote animated & scored Homonymy (for chamber ensemble & cinema); scored the stage version of the silent movie classic Metropolis; produced the soundtrack album to the gay porn feature Hustler White; as well as appearing as himself in John Greyson¹s feature film Un©ut and Craig Baldwin¹s Sonic Outlaws, and he was the subject of one of Moses Znaimer¹s television documentaries The Originals.

Other recent activities include: a sonic motorcade in Brasilia; and a dance composition for 22 choreographers (including Bill T.Jones, Margie Gillis, & Holly Small); plus commissions from the Lyon Opera Ballet, Dutch National Radio, Change of Heart, SMCQ and Radio Canada. Other works are in the active repertoire of the Kronos Quartet (they¹ve played his Spectre over 300 times worldwide, & another commission, Mach almost as often), the Culberg Ballet Sweden, the Monaco Ballet, The Deutsche Opera Ballet Berlin, The Modern Quartet, the Penderecki Quartet, and others. His recorded works have been used in productions for radio, stage, concert, television, film, Hollywood movies, computer media and video.

In 1990, Oswald¹s most notorious recording, plunderphonic, was destroyed by prudes in the Recording Industry representing Michael Jackson. He has since released recordings on Elektra, Avant, ReR Megacorp, Blast First, & Swell, featuring transformations of the music and performances of Stravinsky, Metallica, James Brown, György Ligeti, Dolly Parton & many others. A box-set CD & book retrospective of his plunderphonics work has just been appropriated from Oswald¹s YONY label by Seeland. The first disc of his Grateful Dead production GrayFolded was selected as the #1 international recording of the decade by the Toronto Sun. In the same year his album of improvised music, Acoustics was a #1 critic¹s selection in Coda magazine. The GrayFolded package, completed the following year was selected for best of the year lists in Rolling Stone, The New York Times and many other publications.

Oswald is Director of Research at MysteryLaboratory in Canada, and Musical Director of the North American Experience. Eye Weekly¹s '94 year end report annointed him a "God-like being". The Montreal Mirror says "John Oswald is probably Canada's most important composer-musician," the London Observer has called him "the maddest man on the planet," and the Milo Miles Village Voice said, "For the moment, John Oswald is a solo movement, the most exciting school of one in music."