Kyle Gann

Kyle Gann (b. 1955) is an American composer, musicologist, critic, writer, and journalist, Chair of the Division of the Arts and Taylor Hawver & Frances Bortle Hawver Professor of Music at Bard College. He grew up in a musical family and started composing at the age of 13. His son, Bernard Gann, is a guitarist in the New York transcendental black metal band Liturgy (2). Gann received a B.Mus. degree from The Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1977, as well as M.Mus. (1981) and D.Mus. (1983) degrees from the Northwestern University. His principal teacher was Peter Gena, and additionally, Kyle studied composition with Ben Johnston (1984–86) and briefly Morton Feldman. In 1980, Kyle Gann co-founded a short-lived radical performing group Chicago Interarts Ministry with Phil Winsor and Peter Gena. He also worked for the New Music America festival in 1981 and lectured at The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago in 1986–88. After a few part-time teaching positions at Bucknell University, Brooklyn College, and Columbia University, Gann joined the Bard College faculty in 1997. As a composer, Gann writes microtonal electronic music, rhythmically complex compositions for Disklavier (computer-driven acoustic piano), as well as solo piano and ensemble pieces. Most of his music expresses the concept of repeating loops, ostinatos, and isorhythms going out of phase with each other; he sought inspiration in the studies of astrology (particularly Dane Rudhyar's writings) and Native American music, such as Hopi, Zuni, and other Southwest Pueblo tribes. He started writing for The Village Voice in 1986 and had a weekly column on "new music" there until 1997. Kyle Gann also worked as a journalist at the Chicago Reader, Tribune, Sun-Times, and The New York Times. As a musicologist, Gann authored over 3,000 articles for 45 publications, including original studies on La Monte Young (in Perspectives of New Music), Henry Cowell, John Cage, Edgard Varèse, Earle Brown, Julius Eastman, Mikel Rouse, John Luther Adams and other prominent American composers. He published a few books, such as The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (Cambridge University Press '95), American Music in the 20th Century (Schirmer Books '97), Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (University of California Press 2006), No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33" (Yale University Press 2010), as well as Robert Ashley (2012) and Essays After a Sonata: Charles Ives's Concord (2016) at the University of Illinois Press.