Common Sense: WOOLF

Randall Woolf studied composition privately with David Del Tredici and Joseph Maneri, and at Harvard. In 1999-2000, he was a Guggenheim Fellow. In 1997 he composed a new ballet of Where the Wild Things Are, in collaboration with Maurice Sendak and Septime Webre which has since been performed by the Washington, Colorado, Georgia and Louisville ballet companies. For next season he will compose a theatrical work for flute and electronic soundtrack for Ransom Wilson's solo recital at Lincoln Center, a string quartet with electronics for Ethel, a multi-media work for the Akron Art Museum and Symphony, and a group of songs for drumloops, bass, trumpet, electric guitar, and vocalist/co-composer Tyrone Henderson. He is also composing new dance music for Heidi Latsky and for Lava.

His works have been performed by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New Millennium Ensemble, the EOS orchestra, conductor Ransom Wilson with the Symphony Nova Scotia, Fulcrum Point, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Seattle Symphony, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, Bang On A Can/SPIT Orchestra, California EAR Unit, American Composers Orchestra, twisted tutu, and others. He has also arranged music for John Cale (of the Velvet Underground), Kronos Quartet, Siouxsie Sioux, the Mediaeval Baebes, Atau Tanaka, and David Lang. Cri/Emergency Music has recorded a CD of his works, entitled ROCK STEADY. Also on Emergency Music: Dancetudes (Kathleen Supové), My Insect Bride (Common Sense Ensemble), and Your Name Backwards (twisted tutu) and Where the Wild Things Are. Ransom Wilson and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two are planning to record a CD of his works for chamber orchestra in the coming year. He has collaborated on several film scores with John Cale, including American Psycho, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis.

Find out more about Randall at
Randall Woolf.com

My Insect Bride excerpt from Common Sense

"My Insect Bride inspired by the film The Fly, marries the cold cruel beauty of insects with humankind's soft sense of compromise and empathy. Relentless and sentimental, it also creates a musical marriage of the heartless Hohner Clavinet with the sounds of 'human' winds and strings. It's an imaginary sound track to a horror film for humans and a love story for arthropods."

Artifical Light
from The Shock of the Old

"in writing artificial light, i wanted to combine my new-found interest in electronics with this unusual opportunity to write new music for these ancient instruments. i created digital samples by taking excerpts from american baroque's CDs of telemann and handel, and subjecting them to various hi-tech sci-fi modifications. for some reason i was also moved take a tune from my sketches for the piece and 'program' it for a small dutch music box that has 'punch cards' which allow you to write music for it, and make a sample from that also. at that point my piece became a meditation on old and new musical technolgies, all woven together in dreamy hallucinatory way, creating a fusion and confusion of time and place."

dan BECKER