David Denniston biosketch

David Denniston (b. 1957)

David Denniston is an innovative, fun-loving, and excessively enthusiastic composer, who works in many styles and media (varying from full orchestra and chamber music to electronic sound landscapes), and who enjoys creating digital graphics, web sites, and various useless cyberjunk almost as much as he enjoys composing music. He has been composing riotous music since he was old enough to reach the keys of helpless pianos, much to the dismay of housekeepers and piano tuners, although recently his style has become more accessible to the uninitiated. He has studied composition with Frederic Rzewski, Jonathan Kramer, Earle Brown, Andrew Imbrie, Richard Felciano, Peter Racine Fricker, Edward Applebaum, Joel Hoffman, Allen Sapp, Emma Lou Diemer, Michael Raeder, Theophane Hytrek, and others. He completed his undergraduate study in music at the University of California at Berkeley, and, persistent as he is, went to graduate school at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, finishing a doctorate in 1990. While there he taught numerous courses, edited the nationally-known Music Research Forum, and composed music for small audiences consisting mainly of other composers.

Outside of graduate school, Dr. Denniston found that things were different. It was possible to create music that uses line, color and timbre in ways that are beautiful without causing little gusts of laughter, snickers and coughs from an audience of epileptoid aesthetic cripples. The pretty 3:4:5 acoustical relationship known to music theory as the major triad was welcomed in the way that oxygen is welcomed by living organisms. Breathing this unpolluted air, composer and audience thrived; after several years of silence, Dr. Denniston began to compose music again, using whatever musical vocabulary was appropriate to the occasion, and whatever computer technology made him too excited to sleep.

Currently Dr. Denniston composes music in many genres, from solo instrument, especially piano, through chamber ensembles on up to large orchestra and wind ensemble. Although often seduced by technology, he can often be found with a pencil in hand, sitting at a drafting table, hearing counterpoint in his head; or hammering on that archaic beast, an "acoustic" piano, to the detriment of his relations with his neighbors (who prefer the "thump thump thump do-do-do-do" kind of music that comes out of radios and TVs). Currently he is preparing several pieces for publication, and is refining many of his electronic compositions for an upcoming CD. His current pet project is to create a "gallery" of music and accompanying graphics for performance on the World-Wide Web; he intends this project to be the first attempt ever to play music to an unknown audience consisting of anyone in the world with a computer. In this non-traditional setting, unlike the formal ritual of the concert hall where listeners come, sit, hear each piece through and then depart, listeners can start, stop, browse and re-listen at will; indeed listeners may not be aware that they are experiencing a new form of concert art until, having read this line, they return to the music.

The composer lives in Santa Barbara, California, again, after a sojourn of two years in the deep south, a journey of some significance in his personal life, which has left him, however, with no regrets. On fragrant spring evenings, or fog-enshrouded autumn mornings, you can find him walking on the beach at low tide, or climbing in the mountains, hearing strange music in his head. Unfortunately, because the United States does not support its artists, he has found it necessary to make his living another way: he manages the GIS department at a large environmental engineering firm; and he finds this to be satisfying in a left-brained sort of way, completely complementary to composition, and quite a bit of fun a lot of the time.

More-or-less complete Composition List 1973-1996

More personal stuff : pictures, hiking trails, reminiscences, cooking recipes, political opinions, diatribes, thunderous ravings, perverse wishes, invectives and lunatic rants)

About the Artist

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