Alexander Ness is a doctoral student in composition at New York University. His recent work focuses on microtonality, North Indian music theory, and instrumental gesture. His current projects involve environmental noise, live electronics, and techniques borrowed from film, theater, and literature. He has written pieces for Due East, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Arditti String Quartet, among others. In addition to writing music, he teaches music theory and musicianship to NYU’s undergraduates.
I’m a doctoral candidate in composition at NYU, where I study with Lou Karchin and Elizabeth Hoffman. My recent pieces include “Xayāl” for the flute and percussion duo Due East, “Glass Drum” for the cellist Hayang Kim, and “Cycles” for the International Contemporary Ensemble and soprano Emily Eagen. My solo viola piece, “Shruti,” has been released on the language of..., a CD from quietdesign records featuring the new music of young New York City composers. In addition to writing music, I play and sing in Glissando bin Laden, a noise-and-drone band.
My musical interests include tabla bols, just intonation, crude instruments (such as beer bottles), Baroque harmony and ornamentation, homemade speakers, and environmental recordings. I have spent several summers at the Walden School in New Hampshire, teaching Hindustani music, contemporary music, figured bass, composition, and musicianship. I am working on a short music theory and composition textbook emphasizing formalism and the analysis of patterns. [Note: this became the Tabulator project.]
[Written for a “Hot Air/Tight Strings” grant application (Sept. 2008)]
Alexander Ness is a fifth-year doctoral student in New York University's music department. His recent compositions include Thread Chorale, for the flute and violin duo Hot Air/Tight Strings; Akousmetria, a video score for six players (premiered by Tom Blancarte, Nathan Davis, Peter Evans, Dan Peck, Meighan Stoops, and Katherine Young); and Qāyadā, for computer animation and six-channel sound. Shruti, for solo viola, is available on the language of..., a CD from quietdesign records featuring new music by young New York City composers. He also performs in the noise/drone band Glissando bin Laden, and can be heard on their CD, Drone Level Orange (Carrier Records).
As the recipient of a Beebe Fellowship in 2005, he travelled to Varanasi (Benares) to study tabla with Ramu Pandit and vocal music with Ritwik Sanyal. For three consecutive summers starting in 2006, he taught at the Walden School, a composition program for middle- and high-school students. As a historian of music theory, he studies eighteenth-century acoustics and its challenge to conventional harmonic theory; he is writing a dissertation on the harmony treatises of Leonhard Euler and Joseph Sauveur.
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