Henry Warwick

Henry Warwick has been musically active since childhood when his parents bought him a plastic Magnus Reed Organ. As a teenager he played bass in some progrock cover bands. Later he did the sound and visuals for such a band in NJ, called Solaris. He attended art school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston MA, and then received his BFA from MGSA/Rutgers University. After university he moved to Washington DC in 1982 and pursued more visual artwork. While a resident of a Zen Centre there (1985/1986) his friend Bob Boilen lent him an Arp Odyssey synthesizer (that Bob had borrowed from Robin Rose). Shortly after leaving the Zen Centre, he took out a loan and acquired an electronic music studio. At its maximum, he had an Atari 1040ste computer, two Korg DSS-1 sampler/synthesizers, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002, a Yamaha TX81z and DX11, and an assortment of audio processing gear, mixers, and amplification. It was with that collection of devices that Henry produced several cassette releases: Electronic Etudes (1987) Metawind (1988) Breathless (1989) Snow (1991) After Snow (1991) Henry moved to San Francisco, and met Alan Herrick who was running Auricular Records, a record store in the lower Haight that specialised in industrial and experimental music. Later, when the store closed, Alan reformed Auricular as a music label. In the mid 1990s, he focussed on visual art and performance rather than recording. In the late 1990s Henry pared back his gear to an Apple computer and a Yamaha CS2x synthesizer, which he used to compose his first CD, "Keraunograph" in 2000. Gary Todd of the Cortical Foundation was of great assistance in this release. "Keraunograph" was followed by "k.2", a free online downloadable release in 2003. It was largely a res-statement of the ideas that went into "Keraunograph" and the two can be seen as very much sibling projects. This was followed by "Live!", which consisted of two works, "Ode to Hats" was performed at a party, 5 June 2004. The second piece, Blue Eggs and Spam, was performed at Javacat Cafe, 4 December 2004. After "Live!", Henry recorded with a few ensembles: The Skeptics (2003), CDW (2003), MRW (2004), and Marz Warwick (2007) each resulting in a free downloadable album. During this time he acquired an MFA in interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College (2004). In 2007, he relocated to Toronto as he accepted a professorship at Ryerson University's RTA : School of Media. In 2012 he completed his Ph.D. in Communications from the European Graduate School (2012). During this time he continued recording, if at a lower pace - he had a lengthy dissertation to write. In 2013 he completed the recordings that would become "Something Borrowed" which was released in July 2014. In 2014 he designed software that plays "In C" by Terry Riley as an application on the Apple iPad. The software was written by the avant garde clarinetist, Matt Ingalls. Henry toured a number of concerts performing "In C" across the USA and Canada in 2014.