Biography
The prospect of Mitch Miller's posthumous dismay arises readily from Dan Plonsey's output. The Bay Area multi-instrumentalist and composer drew direct impetus from the very proponent of easy listening whose Sing Along With Mitch programs dominated early-'60s airwaves, yet Plonsey's pieces invite descriptors such as avant-garde, experimental, free-form, free music, or noise music rather than any notion of "hard listening." Such an aesthetic stands worlds apart from Miller's own efforts to acquaint youngsters with symphonic instruments through illustrated recordings.
One such Miller production surfaced amid the folk and jazz discs Plonsey examined in his family's Cleveland home. The series anthropomorphized orchestral instruments as whimsical figures, prompting young Plonsey to favor Max the Saxophone above the rest; nevertheless his parents supplied a clarinet at age six, judging any saxophone oversized for that stage of childhood.
Decades afterward, Plonsey would admire Anthony Braxton, whose contrabass saxophone required military air transport during the 1980s because commercial carriers could not accommodate its bulk. This affinity emerged once Plonsey reached university and began composing in earnest. Extensive listening and reading yielded both genuine influences and at least one instructive error: after encountering a Down Beat profile of an experimental reeds-and-guitar duo, he began "preparing" his own saxophones with temporary modifications, only later recognizing that the guitarist, not the reed player, had been the practitioner of that technique. Yale University nevertheless conferred a B.A. in math and music upon him in 1980.
Plonsey's subsequent role as curator of concerts at a Berkeley art gallery and coffeehouse introduced his work to a wider experimental audience. By that point he had completed a master's degree in composition at Mills College under the guidance of Braxton, Martin Bresnick, David Lewin, Roscoe Mitchell, and Terry Riley. Following the example of both Braxton and Mitchell, he maintains parallel careers as performer and composer, assembling ensembles for any of the more than 150 works he has created. Among them, the Berkeley Symphony presented "The Dolphins in the Forest" within its children's concert series.
Plonsey has also enlisted his own children as performers from the earliest feasible age, an approach that several avant-garde figures—Gunter Hampel, Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, and Dennis Gonzalez among them—have found compelling. Critical reception of such collaborations remains uniformly negative when the participants are younger than fourteen, though approbation typically follows once those musicians reach their later teens.
As his own catalog has expanded toward ever-larger ensembles, Plonsey has become a central presence within the Bay Area experimental community. In 1999 he established Daniel Popsicle, an orchestra whose instrumentation encompasses Balinese gamelan instruments, Turkish saz and cumbus, Japanese shakuhachi and shofar, and a ram's horn linked to Jewish mysticism. The same year marked the beginning of his operatic collaborations with librettist Paul Schick.
One such Miller production surfaced amid the folk and jazz discs Plonsey examined in his family's Cleveland home. The series anthropomorphized orchestral instruments as whimsical figures, prompting young Plonsey to favor Max the Saxophone above the rest; nevertheless his parents supplied a clarinet at age six, judging any saxophone oversized for that stage of childhood.
Decades afterward, Plonsey would admire Anthony Braxton, whose contrabass saxophone required military air transport during the 1980s because commercial carriers could not accommodate its bulk. This affinity emerged once Plonsey reached university and began composing in earnest. Extensive listening and reading yielded both genuine influences and at least one instructive error: after encountering a Down Beat profile of an experimental reeds-and-guitar duo, he began "preparing" his own saxophones with temporary modifications, only later recognizing that the guitarist, not the reed player, had been the practitioner of that technique. Yale University nevertheless conferred a B.A. in math and music upon him in 1980.
Plonsey's subsequent role as curator of concerts at a Berkeley art gallery and coffeehouse introduced his work to a wider experimental audience. By that point he had completed a master's degree in composition at Mills College under the guidance of Braxton, Martin Bresnick, David Lewin, Roscoe Mitchell, and Terry Riley. Following the example of both Braxton and Mitchell, he maintains parallel careers as performer and composer, assembling ensembles for any of the more than 150 works he has created. Among them, the Berkeley Symphony presented "The Dolphins in the Forest" within its children's concert series.
Plonsey has also enlisted his own children as performers from the earliest feasible age, an approach that several avant-garde figures—Gunter Hampel, Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, and Dennis Gonzalez among them—have found compelling. Critical reception of such collaborations remains uniformly negative when the participants are younger than fourteen, though approbation typically follows once those musicians reach their later teens.
As his own catalog has expanded toward ever-larger ensembles, Plonsey has become a central presence within the Bay Area experimental community. In 1999 he established Daniel Popsicle, an orchestra whose instrumentation encompasses Balinese gamelan instruments, Turkish saz and cumbus, Japanese shakuhachi and shofar, and a ram's horn linked to Jewish mysticism. The same year marked the beginning of his operatic collaborations with librettist Paul Schick.
Albums
