Biography
Since the late 1970s Gordon Monahan has produced an array of pieces that stretch from piano writing to loudspeaker-based environments. His earliest musical activities involved several years performing with rock ensembles that he joined in the closing years of the 1960s. Between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1980s the Canadian-born artist pursued studies in physics followed by piano and composition, first in Ottawa and later in New Brunswick; during two of those years he served as pianist for John Cage’s Etudes Australes while also receiving instruction directly from Cage. Installations that combined visual and sonic elements, along with purpose-built sound objects, began to appear in his output toward the close of the 1970s, frequently drawing on environmental energies such as the wind that drives the strings of his kinetic piece Long Aeolian Piano. Piano works written throughout the 1980s include the cycle titled Piano Mechanics. In the middle and later 1990s he developed Multiple Machine Matrix (MMM), an interconnected array of distinctive instruments assembled from reclaimed materials and governed by a MIDI-controlled computer system. By that period Monahan had settled in Berlin, where he joined Laura Kikauka both for collaborative projects and for the operation of an underground bar over several years; the city also maintains a permanent interactive installation by the artist, Silicon Lagoon, completed in 2000. Commissions have come from CBC Radio, the DAAD Festival, and additional organizations; one such project, requested by a Miami group, was excluded from the 1988 New Music America festival. Further notable scores comprise When It Rains, written for Canada Musique in 2000, Earworks from 1983, and Music From Nowhere, completed in 1992. Monahan serves as organist for the pop ensemble Fuzzy Love and holds the position of artistic director for the multimedia collective KB Zed. He has undertaken multiple residencies across North America and contributed articles to assorted music journals. Several recordings that originally appeared on his own imprint were later reissued by Swerve Editions and Musicworks.
Albums
