Fromm Distinguished Scholar Concert: Rand Steiger

Program:
Cyclone (2013) with Josh Rubin, clarinet
Longing (2021) with Miranda Cuckson, violin
Concatenation (2012) with Rebekah Heller, bassoon

Rand Steiger:
Rand Steiger was born in New York City and lives in San Diego, where he draws inspiration from the natural landscape and the long history of experimental music in Southern California.

Many of his compositions combine orchestral instruments with digital audio signal processing. They also propose a hybrid approach to just and equal-tempered tuning, exploring the delicate perceptual cusp between a harmony and a timbre that occurs when tones are precisely tuned. Some examples include: Ecosphere, developed at Ircam and premiered by the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris; Traversing, premiered by the Southbank Sinfonia in London; Cryosphere, premiered by the ACO at Carnegie Hall, A Menacing Plume, premiered by the Talea Ensemble, and the Coalescence Cycle, premiered on a Miller Theater Composer Portrait Concert by the International Contemporary Ensemble. In 2016 he was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to collaborate with Yuval Sharon to create Nimbus, an installation that embedded 32 loudspeakers in clouds hanging in W.D. Concert Hall that played a series of compositions throughout the day for the entire season. Currently he is completing a trilogy of string quartets with electronics for premiere by the JACK Quartet at the 2025 Time:Spans Festival in New York City.

Steiger was also active as a conductor specializing in contemporary works until deciding in 2010 to concentrate entirely on composition. He led a series of critically acclaimed concerts with the Ensemble Sospeso in New York City in the early 2000's, and with the California EAR Unit at the Los Angeles County Museum in the 1980's and 90's. Among other groups he conducted were the Aspen Chamber Ensemble, La Jolla Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, New York New Music Ensemble, and the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain (Switzerland). Among his recordings as conductor are operas by Anne LeBaron, Hilda Paredes and Anthony Davis, and chamber works by Elliott Carter, George Lewis, Mark Osborn, Roger Reynolds, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Subotnick, Iannis Xenakis and Wadada Leo Smith. He has also conducted many world, New York and California premier performances, including works of Muhal Richard Abrams, Louis Andriessen, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, Henry Brant, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Gordon, Jonathan Harvey, Aaron Kernis, Scott Lindroth, James Newton, Luigi Nono, Augusta Read-Thomas, Roger Reynolds, Terry Riley, Poul Rudders, Frederick Rzewski, Kaija Saariaho, Giacinto Scelsi, Elliott Sharp, Julia Wolfe, Toru Takemitsu, Jon Tavener, and Erki-Sven Tuur.

His compositions and performances are recorded on the Centaur, CRI, Crystal, Einstein, Koch, Mode, New Albion, New Dynamic, New World, Nonesuch, Tundra, and Tzadik labels. Recent works for instruments and electronics are available on Coalescence Cycle Volume 1, on Tundra/New Focus (featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble), A Menacing Plume, on New World Records (featuring the Talea Ensemble), and Ecosphere, Music for Instruments and Electronics on EMF (featuring the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Southbank Sinfonia). The JACK Quartet will release a new disc of his complete string quartets in 2025.

A former Guggenheim and Rome Prize Fellow, he also served as Composer-in-Residence at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University where he will return in 2025 as the Fromm Distinguished Scholar.

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