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Jason Eckardt
(b. 1971) played guitar in jazz and metal bands until, upon first
hearing the music of Webern, he immediately devoted himself to
composition. Since then, his music has been influenced by his interests
in perceptual complexity, the physicality of performance, and self-organizing
processes in the natural world. He has been recognized through
commissions from Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Koussevitzky
Foundation, the
Guggenheim Museum, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the New
York State Music Fund, Meet the Composer, the
Oberlin Conservatory, and percussionist Evelyn Glennie; awards from the
League of Composers/ISCM (National Prize), Deutschen Musikrat-Stadt
Wesel (Symposium NRW Prize), the Aaron Copland Fund, the New York State
Council on the Arts, ASCAP, the University of Illinois (Martirano
Prize), the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and Columbia University (Rapoport
Prize); and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller
Foundation, Fondation Royaumont, the MacDowell and Millay Colonies, the
National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the Fritz Reiner
Center for Contemporary Music, the Composers Conference at Wellesley,
the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the Yvar
Mikhashoff Trust for New Music.
Major festivals have programmed his works, including the Festival d'Automne a Paris, IRCAM-Resonances, ISCM World Music Days (1999, 2000), Darmstadt, Voix Nouvelles, Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, Musikhost, Currents in Musical Thought-Seoul, New Consortium, International Review of Contemporary Music, Festival of New American Music, and the International Bartok Festival. Performances of Eckardt's music have been broadcast by the BBC, Saarlandisches Rundfunk, Radio Socioculturelle, WKCR, the Australian Broadcasting Company, WBAI, and Cultura FM Espana. Out of Chaos, a portrait CD recorded by Ensemble 21, is available on Mode. Other recordings include Echoes' White Veil by pianist Marilyn Nonken on CRI, Transience by marimbist Makoto Nakura on Helicon, Sweet Creature by percussionist Michael Lipsey on Capstone, and Multiplicities by flutist Nancy Ruffer on Metier. Future releases include 16 by ICE, Tango Clandestino by pianist Amy Dissanayake, Tangled Loops by saxophonist Nathan Nabb, and Trespass with piano soloist Marilyn Nonken and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Tim Weiss, conductor. Eckardt has written on subjects ranging from applications of cognitive research in composition to Richard Serra's use of process from a musical perspective. His work has appeared in Perspectives of New Music, L'etincelle, Dansk Musik Tidsskrift, and Current Musicology. Recent publications include an article in Autour de la Set Theory in IRCAM's Musique-Sciences series and a chapter in Arcana II, edited by John Zorn. Also active as a promoter of new music, Eckardt co-founded and serves as the Executive Director of Ensemble 21, the contemporary music performance group in New York City. Under his leadership, the critically acclaimed Ensemble has earned a reputation for innovative programming and top-caliber performances, premiered over thirty works, and recorded for the CRI and Mode labels. In 1999, Ensemble 21 was the first American ensemble to collaborate in concert with IRCAM. Eckardt
received a doctorate in composition from Columbia University as a
Presidential Fellow. In 1992, Eckardt graduated cum laude from Berklee
College of Music where he was awarded the Richard Levy Scholarship. He
has attended masterclasses with Milton Babbitt, James Dillon, Brian
Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has taught
at Columbia University, the Oberlin Conservatory, New York University, the University of Illinois, Rutgers University,
and Northwestern University and recently joined the faculty of Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
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