Mark Dresser
Encyclopedia
Mark Dresser is an American
double bass
player and composer.
Quartet, as well as diverse groups led by Ray Anderson
, Tim Berne
, Anthony Davis
, Gerry Hemingway
, John Zorn
, and others. He has made over sixty recordings.
He has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts
and Meet the Composer
, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony
and Civitella Ranieri. He holds both B.A. and M.A. degrees in music from the University of California, San Diego
where he studied contrabass with the seminal virtuoso of twentieth century performance practice, Maestro Bertram Turetzky
. He was awarded a 1983 Fulbright Fellowship for advanced contrabass study with Maestro Franco Petracchi
.
Dresser has been composing and performing solo contrabass and ensemble music professionally since 1972 throughout North America, Europe
and the Far East. His own projects include Mark Dresser's "Force Green," and the Mark Dresser Trio, performing his music for the French Surrealist film masterpiece of Luis Buñuel
and Salvador Dalí
, Un chien andalou
as well as the German expressionist silent film classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Additional original solo bass music was composed for the New York Shakespeare
Festival Production of HENRY VI. Collaborative projects include "The Double Trio," composed of the "Arcado String Trio" and the Trio du Clarinettes.
He was commissioned by the Banliues Bleues Festival in Paris
to premier Dresser's composition Bosnia, later recorded on CD by the "Double Trio" as Green Dolphy Street on ENJA. A founding member of the Arcado String Trio, he also received a commission from WDR Radio of Cologne
, Germany
in 1991 to compose For Not the Law, an extended work for string trio and orchestra. Released on CD by JMT, For Three Strings and Orchestra, is the third of five CDs recorded by Arcado. In 1992, Dresser composed and performed Armadillo, for Arcado and the WDR Big Band. In 1995, The Banquet, a double concert for various flutes and contrabass with string quartet was written and commissioned by Swiss flute virtuoso Matthias Ziegler
. Invocation, on Knitting Factory Works is the most recent CD of Dresser's contrabass music.
With James Newton
With John Zorn
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
player and composer.
Biography
He has performed and recorded with many of the luminaries of "new" jazz composition and improvisation. For ten years he performed with the Anthony BraxtonAnthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
Quartet, as well as diverse groups led by Ray Anderson
Ray Anderson (musician)
Ray Anderson is an independent jazz trombone and trumpet player. Anderson is a boisterous trombonist who is masterful at multiphonics. Trained by the Chicago Symphony trombonists, he is regarded as pushing the limits of the instrument. He is a contemporary and colleague of trombonist/composer...
, Tim Berne
Tim Berne
Tim Berne is an American jazz saxophone player and composer.Described by critic Thom Jurek as commanding "considerable power as a composer and ... frighteningly deft ability as a soloist," Berne has composed and performed prolifically since the 1980s...
, Anthony Davis
Anthony Davis (composer)
Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...
, Gerry Hemingway
Gerry Hemingway
Gerry Hemingway is an American jazz composer and percussionist.He has performed with Ernst Reijseger, Anthony Davis, Earl Howard, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Ray Anderson, Mark Helias, Reggie Workman, Michael Moore, Oliver Lake, Marilyn Crispell, Christy Doran, John Wolf Brennan, Don...
, John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
, and others. He has made over sixty recordings.
He has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
and Meet the Composer
Meet the Composer
Meet the Composer is an American organization founded in 1974 by the composer John Duffy as a project of the New York State Council on the Arts. It seeks to assist composers in making a living through writing music by sponsoring commissioning, residency, education, and audience interaction...
, as well as fellowships to the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
and Civitella Ranieri. He holds both B.A. and M.A. degrees in music from the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
where he studied contrabass with the seminal virtuoso of twentieth century performance practice, Maestro Bertram Turetzky
Bertram Turetzky
Bertram Turetzky is a contemporary American double bass soloist, teacher, and author of The Contemporary Contrabass , a book that looked at a number of new and interesting ways of playing the double bass including featuring it as a solo performance vehicle with no other instrumental...
. He was awarded a 1983 Fulbright Fellowship for advanced contrabass study with Maestro Franco Petracchi
Franco Petracchi
Franco Petracchi is a famous Italian double bass player soloist and teacher. He is a native of Pistoia and the author of Simplified Higher Technique. In his method, he introduces some conventions to playing in the thumb-position. He uses names chromatic, semi-chromatic and diatonic for different...
.
Dresser has been composing and performing solo contrabass and ensemble music professionally since 1972 throughout North America, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the Far East. His own projects include Mark Dresser's "Force Green," and the Mark Dresser Trio, performing his music for the French Surrealist film masterpiece of Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
, Un chien andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
as well as the German expressionist silent film classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Additional original solo bass music was composed for the New York Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
Festival Production of HENRY VI. Collaborative projects include "The Double Trio," composed of the "Arcado String Trio" and the Trio du Clarinettes.
He was commissioned by the Banliues Bleues Festival in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to premier Dresser's composition Bosnia, later recorded on CD by the "Double Trio" as Green Dolphy Street on ENJA. A founding member of the Arcado String Trio, he also received a commission from WDR Radio of Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1991 to compose For Not the Law, an extended work for string trio and orchestra. Released on CD by JMT, For Three Strings and Orchestra, is the third of five CDs recorded by Arcado. In 1992, Dresser composed and performed Armadillo, for Arcado and the WDR Big Band. In 1995, The Banquet, a double concert for various flutes and contrabass with string quartet was written and commissioned by Swiss flute virtuoso Matthias Ziegler
Matthias Ziegler
Swiss flautist Matthias Ziegler specializes in contemporary music for various sizes of flute . His original works for these instruments feature numerous extended techniques...
. Invocation, on Knitting Factory Works is the most recent CD of Dresser's contrabass music.
As leader
- 1993 - The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (Knitting Factory)
- 1995 - Invocation (Knitting Factory)
- 1997 - Banquet (Tzadik)
- 1997 - Eye'll Be Seeing You (Knitting Factory)
- 1999 - Sonomondo (Cryptogramophone)
- 2000 - Marinade (Tzadik)
- 2001 - Reunion: Live At The Guelph Jazz Festival (Intrepid Ear)
- 2001 - Duologues (Intrepid Ear)
- 2005 - Time Changes with Denman MaroneyDenman MaroneyDenman Maroney is a jazz musician who plays what he calls "hyperpiano." Hyperpiano "involves stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, striking and strumming the strings with copper bars, aluminum bowls, rubber blocks, plastic boxes and other household objects." This is sometimes done with one hand...
(Cryptogramophone)
As sideman
With Joe LovanoJoe Lovano
Joseph Salvatore "Joe" Lovano is a post bop jazz saxophonist, alto clarinetist, flautist, and drummer. Since the late 1980s, Lovano has been one of the world's premiere tenor saxophone players, earning a Grammy award and several nods on Down Beat magazine's critics' and readers' polls...
- Flights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition TwoFlights of Fancy: Trio Fascination Edition TwoFLights of Fancy: Trio Fascination: Edition Two is an album by the American jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano recorded in 2000 and released on the Blue Note label. The album is a sequel to Lovano's Trio Fascination: Edition One .-Reception:...
(Blue Note, 2000)
With James Newton
James Newton
James W. Newton is an American jazz flautist, composer, and conductor.-Biography:From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone,...
- Binu (1977, Circle Records (Germany)Circle Records (Germany)Circle Records was an Germany based record label specializing in jazz, established in 1976. -Discography:Circle Records was an Germany based record label specializing in jazz, established in 1976. -Discography:...
)
With John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
- Spy vs Spy: the music of Ornette ColemanSpy vs Spy (album)Spy vs Spy: The Music of Ornette Coleman is a 1989 album by American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist John Zorn, featuring the compositions of Ornette Coleman performed in the brief intense style of Zorn's hardcore miniatures....
(1988, Elektra/MusicianNonesuch RecordsNonesuch Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed by Warner Bros. Records.-Company history:Nonesuch was founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman to produce "fine records at the same price as a trade paperback", which would be half the price of a normal LP...
)
External links
- Mark Dresser official site
- "Speaking the language of Mark Dresser: How to make the music grow", by Steve Dalachinsky, from Knitting Factory site
- Mark Dresser Interview at Allaboutjazz.com