Dan Trueman

Dan Trueman (b. 1968) is an American composer, improviser, violinist and fiddle player, inventor, instrument creator and software designer, Professor of Music and Director of Princeton Sound Kitchen at Princeton University. He began playing violin since the age of 4, and switched to a Norwegian Hardanger fiddle decades later, currently performing on a unique Hardanger d'Amore fiddle by Salve Hakedal (with a baroque bow by Michel Jamonneau). In the realms of computer music, Dan Trueman is one of the lead developers and active users of Ge Wang's ChucK music programming language. His compositions explore a wide range of topics, from a rhythmic connection between traditional dance music and machines to unusual phrasing, tuning and ornamentation of the traditional Norwegian music. Dan Trueman is also designing and constructing new digital instruments to implement some of his electronic pieces. Trueman studied physics at Carleton College in Minnesota, as well as composition/music theory at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and composition at Princeton. He taught at Columbia University and Colgate, before joining Princeton faculty in 2002, where Dan Trueman currently teaches counterpoint, electronic music, and composition. He received an award from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 2006 and MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Award (2008). Dan's recent projects include a double-quartet for So Percussion and The JACK Quartet commissioned by the Barlow Foundation, an Olagón concert program with singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, poet Paul Muldoon, and Eighth Blackbird ensemble, ongoing collaborations with Irish fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and guitarist Monica Mugan. Trueman has written music for his own ensembles, such as Interface and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), which he co-founded with Perry Cook, as well as the Brentano String Quartet, Daedalus String Quartet and Cassatt String Quartet, Non Sequitur, and So Percussion. Among Dan's collaborators are Trollstilt, QQQ, American Composers Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, and Adam Sliwinski. Trueman performed live across the United States, Ireland, and Norway, and participated in a few festivals, including Bang On A Can and Den Norske Folkemusikkveka.