THE RESONANCE ATLAS
David Biedenbender
Biography
David Biedenbender is an American composer, conductor and educator whose music draws on an unusually wide range of performing traditions, from classical chamber music and concert bands to jazz, rock and Indian Carnatic music. He studied at Central Michigan University and the University of Michigan, and is Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Area at Michigan State University.
His work encompasses orchestral and chamber music, wind ensemble, multimedia collaborations and interactive electronics. He is particularly interested in combining unfamiliar instrumental timbres with recognisable melodic and harmonic gestures, and in the ways music can suggest memory, space and different experiences of time. His collaborators include Alarm Will Sound, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the American Brass Quintet and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. His honours include the Rudolf Nissim Prize, the Sousa/Ostwald Award and two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Why this music interests us
Biedenbender's Between Worlds (2024), an eighteen-minute sonata for bassoon and piano, is an especially compelling discovery for Resonance. Its three movements explore different kinds of in-between space, from the threshold between waking and sleeping to the experience of time itself. Refraction (2015), an eleven-minute reed quintet written for Akropolis, reveals a contrasting side of his imagination, bringing striking rhythmic energy and varied musical influences into a five-reed ensemble. These are substantial, distinctive works with published listening and perusal materials.
Selected works & listening
Between Worlds (2024; bassoon and piano); Refraction (2015; oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, bass clarinet)
Further information