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Howard, Earl / Denman Maroney  : Fire Song (erstwhile)


 

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Product Information:

Personnel:



Earl Howard-alto saxophone, synthesizer

Denman Maroney-hyperpiano

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Label: erstwhile
Catalog ID: erstwhile 003
Squidco Product Code: 894

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 1999
Country: USA
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded by Michael Brorby.
Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

Artist Biographies

"Earl Howard has been performing his compositions in the United States and Europe for over fifty years. His recent compositions include music for live electronics, electronic tape music as well as music for electronics and instruments. Earl Howard's method of creating orchestrated sounds with electronics and adding live, improvisational performance creates a unique, densely layered composition. Howard has performed at numerous venues including Merkin Hall, the Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, Roulette, and Carnegie Recital Hall. In 2011 Earl Howard received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2004 his first sound installation was commissioned for the Tiffany Collection at the Queens Museum of Art. In the spring of 2003 Howard had a Regents Fellowship at UCSD. Howard received three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. In 1998 Howard was the recipient of Harvard's Fromm Foundation Commission. He graduated from California Institute of the Arts in Music Composition in 1974.

Recently Howard has performed frequently at UCSB, Roulette, the Herbst Theater, The Stone, and Merkin Hall with improvisers including; Georg Graewe, Mari Kimura, Mark Dresser, Anne LeBaron, Evan Parker, Thomas Buckner, and George Lewis. In 2005 he premiered a live improvisation with David Wessel at CINMAT in Berkeley, California. In 2006 he premiered Waftings in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. In 2006 he was commissioned by the Donaueschingen Festival to produce a new ensemble work, Clepton. He also performed and composed for the Acoustmania Festival in Romania and Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon Festival 2006 in Austria. In 2007 Earl Howard was a special guest synthesizer performer and sound designer with the Perspectives Ensemble at the Miller Theatre and with the with Opera Omaha for Anthony Davis's opera Wakonda's Dream. In 2012 he premiered a composition made possible through his Guggenheim Fellowship "Superstring" in New York. This piece brought together musicians Wu Wei, Allan Jaffe, Miya Masaoka, Ernst Reijseger, Mark Dresser, Harris Eisenstadt, and Earl Howard.Earl Howard's compositions have been recorded by a number of musicians including Anthony Davis' recording of "Particle W", for piano and tape, released on the Gramavision label and Gerry Hemingway's recording of "D.R. for Solo percussion" on the Auricle Record label. The recording, "Pele's Tears" is from ten years of his electronic music on the Random Acoustics Label and "Fire Song" on Erstwhile Records with hyperpianist, Denman Maroney. "Strong Force" for ensemble and electronics was released on Mutable Music's Label in the Spring of 2003. "Clepton" and "Granulary Modality" were recently released by New World Records.

Earl Howard has also produced numerous soundtracks for some of the leading film and video artists including Nam June Paik, Mary Lucier, Rii Kanzaki, Bob Harris, and Bill Brand."

-Earl Howard Website (https://www.earlhowardmusic.com/About-Earl-Howard)
10/22/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"The music of "hyperpianist" Denman Maroney (born 1949) is inspired by nature and the music of John Cage, Ornette Coleman, Henry Cowell, Duke Ellington, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, Olivier Messiaen, Thelonious Monk, Conlon Nancarrow and Karheinz Stockhausen among others. Maroney plays what he calls hyperpiano, which involves bowing and sliding the strings with copper bars, steel cylinders, Tibetan prayer bowls, rubber blocks and CD cases and gives him a unique sonic vocabulary. He also uses a system of temporal harmony based on the undertone series that allows him to improvise and compose in several tempos at once.

Maroney also has worked with musicians Tim Berne, Jane Ira Bloom, Jon Deak, John King, Garrett List, Roger Miller, Michael Moore, Bob Ostertag, William Parker, Bobby Previte, Ed Schuller, Elliot Sharp and Peter Zummo among others, and dance and theater artists Davidson Lloyd, Sin Cha Hong, Tom Keegan, Tom Lillard, Erin Martin, Wendy Osserman and Mel Wong among others.

Maroney was educated at Cal. Inst. of the Arts (MFA '74), Bennington College and Williams College (BA '71). His teachers included John Bergamo, Alan Chaplin, Bill Dixon, Jimmy Garrison, Leonid Hambro, Ingram Marshall, Steven Mosko, Morton Subotnick, and James Tenney."

-Denman Maroney Website (http://www.denmanmaroney.com/Bio.html)
10/22/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:
Related Categories of Interest:

Electro-Acoustic Improv
Free Improvisation
Recordings by or featuring Reed & Wind Players
Piano & Keyboards
Before April-2006
Electro-Acoustic
Improvised Music
erstwhile
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Free Improvisation
Recordings by or featuring Reed & Wind Players
Piano & Keyboards
Before April-2006
Friends of Squid

Search for other titles on the label:
erstwhile.


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The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

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