NCID-1192
Stephen Rush
Professor of Music (Dance/Music Technology), School of Music, Theatre & Dance
University of Michigan
Education/Degree:
1 Composition (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester)
About
Rush enjoyed premieres on five continents and released many publications of his musical compositions. He has written 5 operas, chamber, electronic works, concertos, and symphonies, performed by the Detroit Symphony and Warsaw National Symphonies. He has written two books, including a book on liturgy and recent work with Ornette Coleman. His recordings appear on ESP-Disk, Innova, Equilibrium, Deep Listening, Centaur, MMC, RogueArts (Paris), Summit, and CALA Records. As a Professor of Music at University of Michigan, he founded the Digital Music Ensemble, who worked with Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, and Robert Ashley, and premiered works by John Cage, Philip Glass and La Monte Young. Rush has over 35 CDs released, and has performed or recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Eliott Sharp, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Peter Kowald, and his jazz trio Naked Dance (Jeremy Edwards and Andrew Bishop).
Current Work
Hundred and thousands of music students in colleges and universities study fundamentals of music theory each year. The focus in such a class excludes music outside of Western European "classical" music, and presumes that fundamentals of all types of music must be explained through the lens of music from Paris, Leipzig, London and Rome - from 1650-1890. I am proposing a new way and a new assemblage of content around this topic that would included race (through the lens of Hiphop, Indian classical music and African drumming) and gender (with the understanding that about 1/2 of the students in such classes would be called by their professors "young women"). The approach to this ubiquitous topic needs to be globally and sexually inclusive. It is not currently and the problem is looked at by academic leaders as being insurmountable.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Black, embodiment, gender, hip-hop, India, race