Wacky, raunchy, in-your-face, and brainy - these all describe composer and performance artist Eve Beglarian (b. 1958). Daughter of composer Grant Beglarian, she started out as an Uptowner with a Princeton-Columbia education, but then jumped ship and began composing music her professors couldn't countenance. Her approach to musical sources is omnivorous. She's made collages of disco music, updated the 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut, made theater pieces out of Kurt Schwitters' nonsensical Ur-Sonata, and quoted Gregorian chants along with the sounds of a couple having orgasms. One of her best pieces is No Man's Land, a gritty poem to New York whose thoughtful text is accompanied by sampled sounds as grating as the city itself. Beglarian is an amazingly high-tech sampling artist, and much of her music - even orchestra pieces like FlamingO - uses brilliantly manipulated prerecorded noises. She's got two discs out now, one solo, and one with keyboardist Kathleen Supove as her partner in the duo Twisted Tutu. - Kyle Gann

Overstepping, O.O. Discs

Play Nice, with Twisted Tutu, O.O. Discs

Back to Recommended Composers

return to the home page