Jon Forshee

Jon Forshee is an American composer, teacher, writer, editor, curator, and performer

Compositions

Inspired by a range of historical-cultural strains, such as Classical Chinese melodic ornamentation, West African Yoruban chant, and Judeo-Christian apocalyptic literature, Forshee's compositions are for acoustic instruments (solo, chamber, and orchestral), voice, computer and electronic sound, as well as audio-visual media, a chamber opera, and a semi-improvised outdoor site-specific work. His collaborations have included poets as well as videographers. He has composed over 90 works.

In his music for computer sound together with acoustic instruments, “Forshee… expands and extends the instrument’s original quality through the use of electronics.”, a process that can take on mythical overtones as in his Transfigured Verse, in which the electronically extended sound of the harp depicts “Amphion who plays his harp to move stones into place and raise the Seven Gates of Thebes. The harp [in Forshee’s Transfigured Verse] is the builder and healer and answered in a magical kaleidoscope of computer-generated sound”.

Paul Muller interprets Forshee's Transfigured Verse as an allegory for the Old Testament story of David who arrives with lyre in hand with which he pleases Saul who takes him into royal service:

The playing starts out slow but the tension gradually increases as the harp and electronics contrast, perhaps recreating the mental distress that Saul may have felt. The electronics drone along in the background, never dominating, but delivering a relentless sense of oppression. The harp notes and chords gradually become more active, generating a restorative vigor that infuses the overall sound. Towards the finish the tempo slows and the harp notes are spaced out between silences and scattered electronic blips. The final feeling is one of relief so that Transfigured Verse softly and artfully brings out the healing powers of the harp.

Forshee's compositions have been performed by such musicians as Brad Lubman, the Callithumpian Consort, Colin McAllister, Tasha Smith Godinez, and Trio Kobayashi, at such venues as The Stone (NYC), The Tank (NYC), Maverick Concert Hall (Woodstock, NY), and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Recordings of Forshee's music appear on the Open Space and Centaur Records.

Writing, Editing, and Performing

Forshee's publications have focused on music, ideas, and technology of Benjamin Boretz, J.K. Randall, Robert Morris, Roger Reynolds, and Trevor Wishart, specifically Wishart's Soundloom interface, which allows the user to run C-programs for transforming sounds from a graphic interface written in TK/Tcl, hiding the mechanics of the process.

Forshee's writings appear in Perspectives of New Music, the Computer Music Journal, and Open Space. He is also an editor of Open Space and a founding editor of the online journal First: Listen (The Journal of Critical Listening through Music).

Forshee has performed the San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Rochester (NY) premieres of Benjamin Boretz's 1978 spoken text work Language, as a Music, Six marginal Pretexts for Composition. He also teaches and performs on the tuba and theremin.

Career

Forshee has taught music composition, theory, and other music subjects at University of California, San Diego and University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, including its Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP). Forshee is also the founder of the UCCS Theremin Quartet and the UCCS Mindbender Research Orchestra (Mindbender Ensemble).

Education

Forshee graduated from Interlochen Center for the Arts and Bowling Green State University and then obtained a master's degree at the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Allan Schindler, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon , and Robert Morris. He continued his studies at University of California, San Diego, principally with Rand Steiger and Anthony Davis, earning a Ph.D. (2017). Prior to that (in 2005) Forshee also attended courses at the Center for the Composition of Music Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX), in Paris, France.

Forshee also studied privately with George Rochberg. And his reflections on this experience significantly help flesh out contemporary understanding of Rochberg's distinctive poetics and pedagogy. Forshee remarks (as quoted by Amy Wlodarski) that "Rochberg’s personal advice and feedback have all become a part of my musical world and creative thinking". In particular Rochberg's emphasis on serving musicians by composing parts that are 'playable', and his dedication to individualism and freedom have been adopted by Forshee as a shared concern.

Selected works

• Apokatastis (2021) – chamber ensemble with computer-generated sounds
• Anti-Borderlands (2020) – Field orchestra
• Transfigured Verse (2020) – harp and computer-generated sounds
• Opus (2016) – contrabass solo
• Sextet (2013) – bassoon, percussion, harp, harpsichord, ‘cello, bass
• Desiderata (2012) – horn, trombone, tuba
• Ascensions (2012) – Hutchins Consort
• Gig of Gists (2008) – solo piano

Selected Publications

• "Apocalyptic Time and the time of APOKATASTASIS"', Music in the Apocalyptic Mode. Lorenzo DiTommaso and Colin McAllister, eds., Leiden: Brill. pp. 373-383. 2023.
• "Speaking of Listening, Speaking of Seeing: Group Variations II by Benjamin A. Boretz and Russell Craig Richardson; Or, Dialogue Between Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd on ‘Time and What We Make of It" The Open Space Magazine, Issue 19 / 20. 2016.
• "Towards Transcribing Trevor Wishart’s Globalalia" The Open Space Magazine, Issue 12. 2011.
• "Composers’ Desktop Project 5.0.1 review" The Computer Music Journal, 29/5, 2006
• "Rarefactions" Perspectives of New Music, 43/2, 2006.

Listening

• 2022 performance of Forshee’s Apokatastis

External links

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