Noah Creshevsky

Noah Creshevsky is a composer born in Rochester, New York in 1945.

Biography

Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at the Juilliard School, Creshevsky has lived and worked in New York since 1966. ^[1] He taught at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York for thirty-one years, serving as Director of the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music (BC-CCM) from 1994 to 1999. ^[2] He also served on the faculties of Juilliard and Hunter College, and has been a visiting professor at Princeton University.

Creshevsky has been composing electronic music since 1971. Much of his musical vocabulary consists of familiar bits of words, songs and instrumental sounds that he edits but seldom subjects to electronic processing. By obscuring the boundaries of real and imaginary ensembles though the fusion of opposites—music and noise, comprehensible and incomprehensible vocal sources, human and superhuman vocal and instrumental capacities—Creshevsky’s music sounds both Western and non-Western, ancient and modern, familiar and unfamiliar. ^[3]

This alliance of opposites is heard both in his text-sound compositions (1973-1986)—Pop Art works in which extreme and unpredictable juxtapositions of iconographic sonic materials establish links between music and society ^[4] —and in later pieces, in which the integration of electronic and acoustic sources and processes “creates virtual ‘superperformers’ by using the sounds of traditional instruments pushed past the capacities of human performance.” ^[5] Creshevsky’s most recent compositions are examples of "hyperrealism," a term he uses to describe an electroacoustic language constructed from sounds found in our shared environment that he handles in ways that are exaggerated or intense.

A collection of Creshevsky's scores and sound recordings is held at the music library at Northwestern University.^[6]

Discography

CDs

MAN & SUPERMAN Centaur Records CRC 2126

• Variations (1987)
• Electric String Quartet (1988)
• Memento Mori (1989)
• Electric Partita (1990)
• Talea (1991)

AUXESIS Electronic Music by Charles Amirkhanian and Noah Creshevsky Centaur Records CRC 2194

• Politics as Usual (Amirkhanian)
• Borrowed Time (Creshevsky—1992)
• Private Lives (Creshevsky—1993)
• Coup d'état (Creshevsky—1994)

WHO Centaur Records CRC 2476

• Fanfare (1998)
• Sha (1996)
• Twice (1993)
• Who (1995)
• et puis (1998)
• Gone Now (1995)
• Breathless (1997)
• Nude Ascending (1999)

THE TAPE MUSIC OF NOAH CRESHEVSKY, 1971-1992 EM Records (Japan) EM 1042CD

• Strategic Defense Initiative (1986)
• Highway (1979)
• Circuit (1971)
• Drummer (1985)
• Great Performances (1978)
• Sonata (1980)
• In Other Words (Portrait of John Cage) (1976)
• Cantiga (1992)

HYPERREALISM Mutable Music Mutable 17516-2

• Canto di Malavita (2002)
• Jacob’s Ladder (1999)
• Vol-au-vent (2002)
• Hoodlum Priest (2002)
• Novella (2000)
• Ossi di morte (1997)
• Jubilate (2001)
• Born Again (2003)

TO KNOW AND NOT TO KNOW Tzadik Tzadik-8036

• Red Carpet (2007)
• Psalmus XXIII (2003)
• To Know and Not to Know (2005)
• Once (2004)
• Chamber Concerto (1998)
• Jubilate (2001)
• Sequenza (for trombone) (2004)
• Independence Day (1997)
• Free Speech (2006)

FAVORITE ENCORES, Music of Noah Creshevsky and If, Bwana, Pogus Pogus 21049-2

• Mari Kimura Redux (Creshevsky)
• Xyloxings (If, Bwana)
• Shadow of a Doubt (Creshevsky)
• Scraping Scrafide (If, Bwana)
• Intrada (Creshevsky)
• Cicada #4: Version Barnard (If, Bwana)
• Favorite Encores (Creshevsky)

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS Tzadik Tzadik-8069

• Götterdämmerung
• Omaggio
• Three Minute Waltzes
• Brother Tom
• Estancia
• I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci
• Happy Ending

Compilation Albums

• 60x60 (2004-2005) Vox Novus VN-001
• 60x60 (2003) Capstone Records CPS-8744

LPs

Circuit (1971) In Other Words (1976) - Opus One No. 45
Broadcast (1973) Great Performances (1978) - Opus One No. 47
Chaconne (1974) Portrait of Rudy Perez (1978) Highway (1979) - Opus One No. 50
Sonata (1980) - Opus One No. 58
Celebration (1983) - Opus One No. 101
Drummer (1985) Strategic Defense Initiative (1986) - Opus One No. 111

Articles and reviews

"A Language We Already Understand: Noah Creshevsky's Hyperrealism" By Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, NewMusicBox, June 13, 2007
"When drawing from preexisting works, how do you balance legal and moral obligations with the potential to create new art?" by Noah Creshevsky, NewMusicBox November 1, 2004

References

1. ^ http://www.voxnovus.com/composer/Noah_Creshevsky.htm Biography on Vox Novus
2. ^ http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/spotlite/news/index.php?link=102405 Brooklyn College City University of New York
3. ^ Creshevsky, Noah. “Hyperrealism, Hyperdrama, Superperformers and Open Palette.” Arcana II, John Zorn, editor. Hips Road / Granary Books, forthcoming.
4. ^ Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, a cappella books, 1993, pp. 49-50.
5. ^ http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0427,gann,54855,22.html, Kyle Gann, Village Voice, July 6, 2004
6. ^ http://www.library.northwestern.edu/music/archival-collections/creshevsky.pdf Finding aid to the Noah Creshevsky Collection at Northwestern University.

Further reading

• H. Wiley, Hitchcock Music in the United States Prentice Hall, 1988, p. 313.

External links

• CD Review: ‘Twilight of the Gods' by Allan Kozinn New York Times, June 15, 2010
• Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music
• http://www.voxnovus.com/composer/creshevsky/Reviews.htm Listing of Creshevsky reviews
• http://www.scaruffi.com/avant/creshevs.html Piero Scaruffi, A History of Avantgarde Music 2003
• “On Borrowed Time” reprint. Originally published in Contemporary Music Review, Volume 20, Number 4, 2001, pp. 91-98(8).
• http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2004/09/creshevsky1.htm Malcolm Tattersall, Music & Vision September 22 2004

Persondata
Name	Creshevsky, Noah
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1945
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death

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