32 Facts About Roger Reynolds

Roger Lee Reynolds was born on July 18,1934 and is an American composer.

Roger Reynolds is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by technology.

Roger Reynolds won early recognition with Fulbright, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Institute of Arts and Letters awards.

Roger Reynolds is principal or co-author of five books and numerous journal articles and book chapters.

The seeds for Roger Reynolds's focus on music were planted almost by accident when his father, an architect, recommended that he purchase some phonograph records.

Around the time that Roger Reynolds graduated from high school in 1952, he performed a solo recital in Detroit that consisted of the Johannes Brahms Piano Sonata No 3 in F minor, Op.

Roger Reynolds was uncertain about his prospects as a professional pianist, and entered the University of Michigan to study engineering physics, in line with his father's expectations.

Roger Reynolds moved to the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, and worked as a systems development engineer.

Roger Reynolds returned to Ann Arbor in 1957, prepared to commit himself to life as a pianist.

Roger Reynolds was quickly diverted from this path upon encountering resident composer Ross Lee Finney, who introduced Reynolds to composition.

Roger Reynolds was engrossed by composing music, but he was still unsure what it meant to be a composer in America.

At these Midwest Composers Symposia, Roger Reynolds first encountered Harvey Sollberger, who would become a lifelong colleague and friend.

Subsequently, when the Spanish expatriate composer Roberto Gerhard came to Ann Arbor, Roger Reynolds gravitated towards him:.

Roger Reynolds co-founded the ONCE Group in Ann Arbor with Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma, and was active in the first three festivals in 1961 to 1963.

Roger Reynolds was very intense and very rebellious in some regards.

Roger Reynolds worked at the West German Radio's Electronic Music Studio, where he completed A Portrait of Vanzetti.

Roger Reynolds was particularly struck by the spatial elements in the piece.

Roger Reynolds accepted a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs, which took him and Karen to Japan from 1966 to 1969.

Roger Reynolds met and became friends with composers Toru Takemitsu, Joji Yuasa, pianist Yuji Takahashi, electronics specialist Junosuke Okuyama, critic Kuniharu Akiyama, painter Keiji Usami and theatre director Tadashi Suzuki.

Roger Reynolds began work on establishing what became the Center for Music Experiment and Related Research in 1971, an organized research unit that later evolved into the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts.

Roger Reynolds has addressed the European musical tradition with three symphonies, four concertos and five string quartets, works that have been performed internationally as well as in North America.

Archipelago was one of the first works that Roger Reynolds did that used technology to drastically alter not only the sounds of the composition, but the process of composing.

The impetus was as the title suggests, a chain of islands, an idea which Roger Reynolds elaborated on with a layered theme and variations process.

Roger Reynolds was stimulated by his UCSD colleagues Kenneth Gaburo and baritone Philip Larson, deploying extended vocal techniques, such as "vocal-fry" in the VOICESPACE works : Still, A Merciful Coincidence, Eclipse, and The Palace.

Roger Reynolds came across John Ashbery's Self-Portrait a Convex Mirror while reading one evening:.

Roger Reynolds later worked collaboratively with John Ashbery on the seventy-minute song cycle last things, I think, to think about, which uses a spatialized recording of the poet speaking.

Later, in Japan, Roger Reynolds worked with engineer Junosuke Okuyama to build a "photo-cell sound distributor," which used a matrix of photoelectric cells to move sounds around a quadraphonic setup, with the aid of a flashlight as a kind of controller.

Roger Reynolds is concerned not only with the physical locations of sound sources around a listener, but metaphoric notions of space.

Roger Reynolds adapts his use of spatial audio to the performance space.

Roger Reynolds continues to mentor student in the University of California's Department of Music as of 2025.

At the University of Illinois, Roger Reynolds wrote his first book, Mind Models: New Forms of Musical Experience.

Roger Reynolds was the first to clearly identify and consolidate into a single framework the vast array of forces shaping this heterogeneous body of work.