Noah Creshevsky

Noah Creshevsky is a composer and electronic musician born in Rochester, New York in 1945. He coined the term hyperrealism to describe his work.

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 (music)," 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.

Collections of Creshevsky's scores and sound recordings are held at the music libraries of Northwestern University.[6] and the New York Public Library.

Discography

CDs

MAN & SUPERMAN (1992) Centaur Records CRC 2126

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

WHO (1993) Centaur Records CRC 2476

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

AUXESIS Electronic Music by Charles Amirkhanian and Noah Creshevsky (1995) Centaur Records CRC 2194

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

HYPERREALISM (2003) 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)

THE TAPE MUSIC OF NOAH CRESHEVSKY, 1971-1992 (2004) 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)

TO KNOW AND NOT TO KNOW (2007) 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, (2008) 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 (2010) 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

ROUNDED WITH A SLEEP (2011) Pogus Pogus 21063-2

  • Rounded With A Sleep
  • La Sonnambula
  • Lisa Barnard Redux
  • What If
  • Tomomi Adachi Redux II
  • The Kindness of Strangers
  • In Memoriam

THE FOUR SEASONS (2013) Tzadik Tzadik-8097

  • i. summer
  • ii. interlude 1
  • iii. autumn
  • iv. interlude 2
  • v. winter
  • vi. interlude 3
  • vii. spring

HYPERREALIST MUSIC, 2011-2015 (2015) EM Records (Japan) EM 1140CD

  • 1. Pulp Fiction (2014)
  • 2. Tomomi Adachi Redux I (2011)
  • 3. Quaestio (2014)
  • 4. Orchestral Variations (2013)
  • 5. Full Fathom Five (2011)
  • 6. La Valse (2013)
  • 7. You Are Here (2015)

SLEEPING AWAKE (2019) Open Space Open Space CD 37

  • Electric String Quartet (1988)
  • Passacaglia (2018)
  • Sequenza (for trombone) (2004)
  • Sleeping Awake (2017)

Compilation Albums

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

Reanimator (2018) - Orange Milk Records No. 99

Articles and reviews

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