Alden Jenks
Encyclopedia
Biography
Alden Jenks was born in MichiganMichigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
and received a B.A. from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he studied composition with Andrew Imbrie
Andrew Imbrie
Andrew Welsh Imbrie was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Career:Imbrie was born in New York on April 6, 1921, and began his musical training as a pianist when he was 4. In 1937, he went to Paris to study briefly with Nadia Boulanger...
and Seymour Shifrin. He also studied composition in 1967 with Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
at the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
(Kramer 1998), and electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
with David Tudor
David Tudor
David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...
and Anthony Gnazzo.
As a performer, he served as a controller of the live electronics for Stockhausen’s 1967 Darmstadt collective-composition project, Ensemble (Gehlhaar 1968, 39 and 75), and performed on synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
in the 25th anniversary concert of Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
's In C
In C
In C is a semi-aleatoric musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for any number of people, although he suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work"...
in 1989, released as a recording in 1995 on New Albion Records CD NA071.
As a composer he is primarily known for his work in electronic media, and is Professor of Composition and Director of the E. L. Wiegand Composition Studio at the San Francisco Conservatory. John Adams
John Coolidge Adams
John Coolidge Adams is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine , On the Transmigration of Souls , a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks , and Shaker...
has cited him as an influential colleague, crediting Jenks with introducing him to Wagner (Adams 2004). His composition Nagasaki won the Bourges
Bourges
Bourges is a city in central France on the Yèvre river. It is the capital of the department of Cher and also was the capital of the former province of Berry.-History:...
Electronic Music Competition, and Marrying Music won the and Viotti-Valsesia International Music Competition award.
Compositions (selective list)
- Ansichtskarte an Johann, for two pianos (2001)
- Calcululations, MIDI composition
- Femme Fatale: The Invention of Personality, incidental music for the play by Laura Farabough (1981)
- MENAGE, for synthesizer, piano, and percussion
- Marrying Music, for two pianos
- Martin Put That Gun Away, electroacoustic music (2000)
- Mummermusic, music for a mime act by Peter Kors (1974)
- Nagasaki, electronic music
- Ognaggio al'Anzzonio, electroacoustic music
- Prelude, for organ
- Sour Music (2002)
- Those Long Canadian Winters, theatre music
Sources
- Adams, John. 2004. "Conservatory Days: Address at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, April 22, 2004". John Adams Interviews, Articles & Essays website. (Archived 19 March 2008)
- Gehlhaar, Rolf. 1968. Zur Komposition Ensemble: Kompositionsstudio Karlheiz Stockhausen, Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt 1967. Darmstadter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik 11, ed. Ernst Thomas. Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne.
- Kramer, Jonathan. 1998. "Karlheinz in California." Perspectives of New Music 36, no. 1 (Winter): 247–61.