Daniel Warner
Composer, Improviser, Sound Artist, Writer on Contemporary Music and Audio Culture
Daniel Warner
Composer, Improviser, Sound Artist, Writer on Contemporary Music and Audio Culture
Daniel Warner
About
About
About
I am a "worker in rhythms, frequencies, and intensities." --Edgard Varèse
Every piece of music that has influenced me as a musician revealed a creative logic beneath its musical surfaces, no matter if it was Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Juan Atkins, Brian Eno, Stravinsky, or Stockhausen.
Work
About
About
Though currently rooted in experimental electronic and computer music, Warner has also written orchestral and chamber music, having trained as both a classical composer and a jazz drummer.
Once connected to the American electro-acoustic music scene, Warner sees his current music as more closely allied with vanguard electronica and experim
Though currently rooted in experimental electronic and computer music, Warner has also written orchestral and chamber music, having trained as both a classical composer and a jazz drummer.
Once connected to the American electro-acoustic music scene, Warner sees his current music as more closely allied with vanguard electronica and experimental music. He played drums with Glenn Spearman's ensemble and has many done live laptop performances, including the Boston experimental/improvised music series, Zeitgeist, and at the Deep Listening Space in Kingston, New York. More recently Warner has turned back to analog electronic music, utilizing the eurorack format for live performance.
He taught improvisation at Bard College and composition, sound studies, and computer music and electronic music at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
One of his early computer synthesized works, Delay in Glass, is available on a Neuma Records compact disc Electro Acoustic Music I (Neuma 450-73) and his label Virtuelle has released two compact discs of his computer music.
Warner has also collaborated with British video artist Brian Hoey on a series of three sound/land-scape videos, American States, Timepiece, and Tir Na Nog.
Warner's work has been presented at The Festival Synthèse in Bourges, France, The SInes and Squares Festival in Manchester, England, The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival in Vancouver, Canada, and The AV Festival in Newcastle, England.
Bio
About
Bio
Traversing classical modernism, experimental music, progressive rock, free jazz, and post-techno electronica, Warner's musical career has militantly transgressed musical boundaries. After starting out as a drummer in garage bands, Warner decided to become a composer upon discovering Edgard Varèse through the early music of Frank Zappa. He
Traversing classical modernism, experimental music, progressive rock, free jazz, and post-techno electronica, Warner's musical career has militantly transgressed musical boundaries. After starting out as a drummer in garage bands, Warner decided to become a composer upon discovering Edgard Varèse through the early music of Frank Zappa. He attended Princeton University, earning an M.F.A. and Ph.D. studying computer music and composition with Milton Babbitt and Paul Lansky and experimental music and improvisation with J.K. Randall. Warner has studied, taught, and performed widely in places such as Helsinki, Buenos Aires, Rome, and most recently Aarhus, Denmark.
With his colleague at Hampshire College, Christoph Cox, he published the book Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, an annotated collection of writings on experimental music practices from John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer through DJ culture.
In 2017 Warner completed Live Wires: A History of Electronic Music, published by Reaction Books, London.
Writing
Reviews of Audio Culture: readings in modern music
The Wire
[Audio Culture, Revised Edition] is often so stimulating that you're swept along and back into the music itself - and for those with a hunch that a whole world of sound exists beyond the
concert hall, here's your entry point.
Library Journal
The contributors include composers from the worlds of avant-garde classical music, pop, and jazz--e.g. John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pauline Oliveros--as well as cultural historians like Marshall McLuhan and Jacques Barzun and literary experimentalists such as William Burroughs…Students of contemporary music will find this compendium useful
Reviews of Live Wires: A History of electronic music
London Review Bookshop
BBC Music Magazine
"An excellent examination of how five key electronic technologies – the tape recorder, circuit, computer, microphone, and turntable – revolutionized musical thought, production, and performance . . . Music has long been part of our sonic soundscape. But, beginning in the 1950s, and continuing through to current day, seemingly endless combinations of new technologies and creative endeavors created experimental electronic music. Live Wires captures that synergy with engaging history and personal insights . . . Those readers with some awareness of the background Warner provides will find the story engaging. Those with no history with electronic music will find it a sonic adventure well worth reading."
Spectrum Culture
'The key to success with a book of this type is balance; too much detail and the layman is left baffled, but too little leaves more informed readers with a craving for chewy morsels of depth. Where authors such as Simon Reynolds employed a sociological approach in Energy Flash and David Toop’s Ocean Of Sound was one of philosophy, Daniel Warner examines technology in order to analyse the music. He gets it just about right . . . where the author succeeds is by injecting a real sense of his own passion into the text . . . Where descriptive sections could have been burdened with the dryness of unnecessary academic heft, they are lightened here by an authorial style that indicates a love of the music alongside a wealth of knowledge. Definitely best consumed whilst imbibing his excellent chapter of recommended listening."
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