Composer/performer RICHARD TEITELBAUM has been acknowledged a pioneer in electronic music for over three decades, combining electronics with classical forms, jazz improvisation, and world music. His concert works for combinations of electronics, western acoustical instruments, shakuhachi, and voices have been heard all over the globe, from the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Centre Pompidou (Paris) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam); and from the International Jazz Festival (Macao) to the Almeida (London), Holland (Amsterdam), Inventionen (Berlin), Abiko International (Japan), Aspen (Colorado), and Goodwill Games (Seattle) Festivals. His recent activities included a performance of a concert version of his opera Golem in the Radical Jewish Culture Festival at New York's Merkin Hall, intercultural performances with Indonesian and Thai musicians at the first International Festival of New Arts in Bangkok, Thailand, at an all night benefit concert for earthquake vic! tims in Kobe, Japan, in the Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires, and a four concert tour in Switzerland. He has performed and recorded extensively, as a soloist and with a roster of international jazz and classical masters including Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Carlos Zingaro, Fred Frith, Lee Konitz, Yuji Takahashi, Mark Feldman, Nam June Paik and Katsuya Yokoyama (shakuhachi), for labels including Wergo, Hat Art, Centaur, Victo, Polydor, and Arista. Among his recent recordings are his Cyberband project, released by Moers Music in Germany, a new duet album with Anthony Braxton "Live at Merkin Hall" on Music and Arts, and a duet with Andrew Cyrille on the Swedish Silkheart label.
He received his B.A. from Haverford and his M.M. degree at Yale, where he studied with Allen Forte and Mel Powell. While on a Fulbright to Italy he studied composition with Luigi Nono and Goffredo Petrassi. He introduced Europe to the Moog synthesizer, and was a founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Alvin Curran of Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome, and the World Band at Wesleyan University. In 1977, a Senior Fulbright took him to Japan where he studied Gagaku with Masataro Togi and shakuhachi with Katsuya Yokoyama, composing Blends for shakuhachi, synthesizers and percussion, which he performed and recorded with Mr. Yokoyama. cvThis past summer, he composed and performed Reibo Universe, his third work for Mr. Yokoyama, in the Fiske Planetarium of the University of Colorado at the World Shakuhachi Festival.
His innovative use of micro-computers to control synthesizers and acoustic pianos earned Mr. Teitelbaum the 1987 Prix Ars Electronica, sponsored by Austrian Radio and Siemens AG. His GOLEM: An Interactive Opera, which has played in New York, Linz, Cologne, Berlin, Amsterdam and Quebec employs a real-time, interactive MIDI-controlled video disc system by which the live music "animates," edits and controls moving images on the disc and projection screen. A recording of this work was released on John Zorn's Tzadik label in 1995. His recent work, Dal Niente, for MIDI piano, sampler and interactive computer system, was written for Aki Takahashi, and premiered with her in Japan in January, 1997.
He recently completed a new work for two Disklaviers and interactive computer music system commissioned by pianist Ursula Oppens with grants from Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, which was premiered at Merkin Hall in New York City on April 30, 1998, along with the New York premiere of Dal Niente played by Ms. Takahashi.
His other recent performances include appearances at the Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires, at Primavera en Habana, the VII Festival of Electroacoustic Music in Cuba, and a workshop and performance the Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon. In October, 1998 he will tour Austria, Germany, France and Switzerland.
He was recently invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to be in residence at their Villa in Bellagio, Italy, and also by the Bogliasco Foundation to live and work at their Liguria Study Center near Genoa during the fall of 1999.
Other recognition for Mr. Teitelbaum's work includes grants from the Asian Cultural Council and West German Government, and commissions from the Westdeutsche Rundfunk (Cologne), the Venice Biennale, Hessischer Rundfunk (Frankfurt), Radio Bremen, the NEA and New York State Council on the Arts, and Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest. He is currently on the faculty of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, where he teaches electronic and computer music, improvisation, experimental, and world musics, and directs the Electronic Music Studios.