Daniel Lentz

Daniel Lentz stands out as an American composer, visual artist, and educator whose distinctive methods for shaping and delivering music have long set him apart. Real-time electronics entered his performance compositions as early as the 1960s, and the Daniel Lentz Group’s concerts throughout the 1980s and 1990s relied on live multi-track recording methods. Galleries have shown his Illuminated Manuscripts, visual scores that take sculptural form. Multiple releases have appeared under his name since the early 1980s, spanning the post-minimalist choral music of 1984’s On the Leopard Altar to the multi-tracked piano works of 2015’s In the Sea of Ionia. Two albums from the 1990s document his recordings with Harold Budd, and the 2020 release In a Word resulted from his work with Ian William Craig.

Born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1942, Lentz took up piano and trumpet during childhood. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Saint Vincent College in 1962, he received fellowships that supported study at Ohio University, where an Master of Fine Arts in Music Theory/Composition and Musicology followed in 1965, and at Brandeis University, which granted him a full scholarship. In 1966 he held a composition fellowship at Tanglewood, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Electronic Music and Musicology took him to Stockholm, Sweden, for completion in 1968. He subsequently joined the University of California in Santa Barbara as a visiting lecturer, teaching Music Theory, Music Composition, and Electronic Music.

Although live electronic theater pieces had occupied him since 1965, Lentz turned greater attention to composing and performing after 1970. He assembled the conceptual music ensemble California Time Machine, whose works employed tape delay and wine-glass playing. In 1973 he established the San Andreas Fault, an ensemble that presented choral and keyboard pieces using real-time electronics. Between 1974 and 1980 the group toured North America and Europe while recording for several European radio stations. Cold Blue issued his first commercial recording, the 10" EP After Images, in 1981.

After relocating to Los Angeles in 1982, Lentz formed the Daniel Lentz Group. The ensemble, which combined intricate vocal parts with MIDI percussion and keyboards, appeared in configurations that ranged from a quartet to an 18-piece unit. Icon Records released the On the Leopard Altar LP in 1984, while Cold Blue put out Point Conception, a work built from solo piano and an eight-part cascading echo system. New Albion followed in 1985 with Missa Umbrarum, a collection of choral pieces that incorporate wine glasses. Angel Records issued The Crack in the Bell in 1987, featuring members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group; the album marked the label’s initial contemporary classical release.

Lentz settled in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert in 1991, after which his music shifted toward slower and darker textures compared with the brighter, more energetic works composed in Los Angeles. All Saints issued Music for 3 Pianos in 1992, a collaboration with Ruben Garcia and longtime associate Harold Budd, while Japanese label Rhizome Sketch released b.e.comings the same year. Materiali Sonori brought out Walk Into My Voice in 1996, an album interpreting texts by American beat poets that Lentz recorded with Budd and Lentz Group vocalist Jessica Karraker. New Albion presented Apologetica in 1997, a choral ensemble piece that integrates English translations of Mayan, Hopi, and Navaho texts. Beginning in 2000, Aoede Records issued several collections of his music, among them wolfMASS, drawn from traditional Latin masses, and Huit ou neuf pièces dorées à point, inspired by favored Paris restaurants.

Lentz continued his association with Cold Blue by releasing the 15-minute composition Los Tigres de Marte in 2004. The Opus Archives and Research Center at the Pacifica Institute awarded him a composition grant in 2010, and the Rockefeller Foundation provided another in 2012 that included a residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy. In the Sea of Ionia, containing solo and overdubbed piano pieces performed by Aron Kallay, appeared in 2015; River of 1,000 Streams, a cascading-echo work played by pianist Vicki Ray, followed in 2017. New World Records released Ending(s), performed by the Twilight String Orchestra, in 2019. Lentz next joined Canadian vocalist and tape music composer Ian William Craig for the full-length In a Word, issued in 2020 as the sixteenth volume in RVNG Intl.’s FRKWYS collaborative series.