26 Facts About Bob Ostertag

Robert "Bob" Ostertag was born on April 19,1957 and is an American musician, writer, and political activist based in San Francisco.

Bob Ostertag has published seven books, one feature film, a DVD, twenty-six albums, and collaborated with numerous musicians.

On March 25,2006, Ostertag made all of his recordings to which he owns the rights available as digital downloads under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

Bob Ostertag's work playing the Serge synthesizer with Braxton is documented on Creative Orchestra 1978.

Later that same year, Bob Ostertag relocated to New York City, where he befriended John Zorn, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Wayne Horvitz, Toshinori Kondo, and numerous other musicians interested in collaborative improvisation.

Bob Ostertag was not the first musician to perform live with a keyboard-less modular synthesizer, but he was the first person to make it his main instrument in the context of free improvised music.

In 1980, Ostertag released Getting a Head with guitarist Fred Frith and percussionist Charles K Noyes.

Bob Ostertag eventually became an expert on the political crisis in Central America and published widely for a diverse range of publications, including Pensamiento Propio, Pensamiento Critico, The Guardian, the Weekly Mail, Mother Jones and the NACLA Report on the Americas, AMPO, and even the clandestine theoretical journal of the New People's Army in the Philippines.

Bob Ostertag alternated his time in Central America with organizing and public speaking in the US, giving lectures at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rutgers, and many other schools and institutions.

Bob Ostertag returned to music in 1988 when Frith persuaded him to join Frith's review band, Keep the Dog.

Bob Ostertag appeared in Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel's 1990 documentary film on Frith, Step Across the Border.

Bob Ostertag released Attention Span in 1990, featuring Frith on guitars and John Zorn on saxophone.

Bob Ostertag composed the piece using a recording of the AB101 Veto Riot in San Francisco.

When David died before the collaboration could take place, Bob Ostertag made a second, solo piece from the riot recordings, Burns Like Fire, and dedicated it to Wojnarowicz.

Mr Bob Ostertag's stern, purifying gaze has swept away the sentimentality and melodrama that have compromised more famous compositions in the genre.

Bob Ostertag went on to compose Spiral, setting to music the last writing of David Wojnarowicz.

Bob Ostertag composed the work for a chamber ensemble of glass instruments he commissioned from Oliver DiCicco.

In 1993, Bob Ostertag formed a quartet with vocalist Phil Minton, bassist Mark Dresser, percussionist Gerry Hemingway.

The music was composed using a novel method: Minton, Dresser, and Hemingway recorded separate improvisations with no instruction from Bob Ostertag; using the earliest digital audio workstation software, Bob Ostertag blew up the recordings into fragments which he stitched back together as ensemble compositions, which was released as Say No More in 1993, again using art by Wojnarowicz on the cover.

Bob Ostertag then gathered the musicians and, using the computer recording as a "score," rehearsed and toured the music, eventually recording a live performance which was released in 1994 by ORF Radio as Say No More In Person.

In 2012 Bob Ostertag developed this method of composing with fragments of recorded improvisations further with A Book of Hours.

In 2000, Bob Ostertag began a twelve year collaboration called Living Cinema with Quebecois film maker Pierre Hebert.

Bob Ostertag has maintained an interest in electronic instruments throughout his career, leading to a close lifelong friendship with synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla, who was designing a new instrument for Bob Ostertag when he died in 2016.

In 2011, Bob Ostertag released a collaborative EP released on underground techno label Sandwell District with artist Rrose.

In 2019, Bob Ostertag premiered his documentary, Thanks to Hank about the life of artist and activist Hank Wilson.

Bob Ostertag is professor emeritus of technocultural studies at UC Davis.