Paul Dresher

Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent and unique personal style. He pursues many forms of musical expression including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music performances, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater, dance, and film.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist, San Francisco Ballet, Walker Arts Center, University of Iowa, Meet the Composer, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music America, National Flute Association, and the American Music Theater Festival. He has performed or had his works performed throughout North America, Asia, and Europe at venues including New York Philharmonic, the Munich State Opera, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, Arts Summit Indonesia ‘95, Festival Interlink in Japan, and five New Music America Festivals. Dresher has also worked extensively with many choreographers including Margaret Jenkins, Brenda Way/ODC San Francisco, Nancy Karp & Dancers, Wendy Rogers Dance Company, and Allyson Green Dance.

In November 2004, his contemporary chamber group, the six-member Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band, made its Carnegie Hall debut, performing a concert of Dresher’s chamber works as part of the “In Your Ear Festival” curated by John Adams, in conjunction with the New Albion release of Dresher’s CD Cage Machine. In the winter and spring of 2005, the 20th anniversary remount of Slow Fire, Dresher’s seminal music theater collaboration with writer/performer Rinde Eckert, toured to multiple venues in the United States.

In April 2008, the San Francisco Ballet premiered Dresher orchestral score for Thread, his collaboration with choreographer Margaret Jenkins, commissioned for the Ballet’s 75th anniversary celebrations. In May 2006, Dresher’s chamber solo chamber opera The Tyrant, for tenor John Duykers, premiered in five performances at Opera Cleveland and has now been produced in Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago and San Francisco.

Other recently completed composing projects include the acclaimed score for the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s premiere production of To The Lighthouse, an adaption of Virginia Woolf’s novel by playwright Adele Shank and directed by Les Waters Snow in June, a collaboration with playwright Charles Mee and director Chen Shi-Zheng, commissioned by the American Repertory Theatre; and the cello concerto Unequal Distemperament, a collaboration with former Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.

Current projects include a solo piano work for Sarah Cahill and new music theater work using large-scale invented musical instruments for percussionist/performer Steven Schick, Created in collaboration with mechanical sound artist Matt Heckert, instrument builder Daniel Schmidt and writer/director Rinde Eckert, premiered in March 2009 at Stanford University.

Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Dresher received his B.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands. He has had a longtime interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee as well as Balinese and Javanese music. Recordings of his works are available on the Lovely Music, New World (with Ned Rothenberg), CRI, Music and Arts, 0.0. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland, and New Albion labels.