Charlie Morrow (born ''Charles Morrow'', February 9, 1942) is an American
sound artist
Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...
, composer,
conceptualist
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical co ...
, and performer. His creative projects have included chanting and healing works, museum and gallery installations, large-scale festival events, radio and TV broadcasts, film soundtracks, commercial sound design, and advertising jingles.
Education and influences
Morrow was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Rutherford and Passaic, New Jersey. His parents were both
psychiatrists
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
.
He started playing trumpet at age 10, and then took up bugle. Subsequently has also performed using conch shells, cow and goat horns, Jew’s harp, ocarina and homemade electronics. His work has focused on breath, vocalization, gesture and mental dream states.
Morrow attended Columbia College (1958–1961), where his teachers included composer
Otto Luening
Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music.
Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German parents, Eugene, a conducto ...
and, importantly, ethnomusicologist
Willard Rhodes, who introduced Morrow to oral cultures and shamanic traditions.
In 1963, Morrow received a Diploma in Composition from
Mannes College of Music
Mannes School of Music is a music conservatory in The New School, a private research university in New York City. In the fall of 2015, Mannes moved from its previous location on Manhattan's Upper West Side to join the rest of the New School cam ...
where his teachers had included
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe (25 August 1902, Berlin – 4 April 1972, New York City) was a German-Jewish-American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz mo ...
and
William Jay Sydeman. During this time, he also encountered figures from the New York avant garde, notably
Philip Corner
Philip Lionel Corner (born April 10, 1933; name sometimes given as Phil Corner) is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist.
Biography
After The High School of Music & Ar ...
. Morrow performed with Corner in the Tone Roads Ensemble which also featured
James Tenney
James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal ...
and
Malcolm Goldstein
Malcolm Goldstein (born March 27, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York) is an Americans, American-Canadians, Canadian composer, violinist and improviser who has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s. ...
, and through Corner he met radical figures including
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
and
Fluxus
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
artist
Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles (born 1933) is an American visual artist known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications. Knowles was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists who aspired to merge diffe ...
.
In 1964 Morrow met his most important collaborator, poet
Jerome Rothenberg
Jerome Rothenberg (born December 11, 1931) is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry.
Early life and education
Jerome Rothenberg was born and raised in New York ...
, who was then teaching at Mannes. Between 1974 and 1989 they were co-directors of The New Wilderness Foundation, which staged concerts, published EAR Magazine and New Wilderness Letter and issued cassette recordings under the New Wilderness Audiographics imprint.
Compositions
Negotiation with the musical past was an element in Morrow’s compositional thinking, along with a taste for musical pranks. His "Very Slow Gabrieli" (1957) is a dramatically slowed down realization of Giovanni Gabrieli’s “Sonata Pian’ e Forte” for double brass ensemble. A later collage work, “Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves” (1992), shows a mature late twentieth-century imagination engaging in unexpected ways with late medieval style.
Morrow’s conceptualist orientation has led him to write a series of Wave pieces, which involve “herds” of a single instrument, such as “Wave Music I” for 40 cellos or “Wave Music VII” for 30 harps.
Events
Early in his career Morrow organized his own concerts, including “New Music for Trumpet and Ensemble” at Carnegie Hall. But in 1973, after “An Evening with the Two Charlies”, a programme of pieces by Morrow and
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
presented at Lincoln Center, he turned away from the concert hall, preferring to work in public spaces, parks, harbours and city streets. “I became more interested in working with environmental acoustics rather than the blank canvas of the concert hall, where you remove all other sound in order to create your own,” Morrow has explained. Most of his event compositions are immersive and defy capture; Morrow has consequently released few recordings.,
During the mid-1960s Morrow helped
Charlotte Moorman
Madeline Charlotte Moorman (November 18, 1933 – November 8, 1991) was an American cellist, performance artist, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the Annual Avant Garde Fest ...
organize her acclaimed
annual Avant Garde Festival in New York City. Morrow has subsequently worked with professional musicians, such as singer
Joan La Barbara
Joan Linda La Barbara (born June 8, 1947) is an American vocalist and composer known for her explorations of non-conventional or "extended" vocal techniques. Considered to be a vocal virtuoso in the field of contemporary music, she is credited w ...
in The New Wilderness Preservation Band and percussionist
Glen Velez
Glen Velez (born 1949) is a four-time Grammy winning American percussionist, vocalist, and composer, specializing in frame drums from around the world. He is largely responsible for the increasing popularity of frame drums in the United States an ...
in the Horizontal-Vertical Band. But involving members of the public and participation by non-specialists has been a consistent goal of Morrow’s work. He conceived the Ocarina Orchestra as an ensemble that could be musically effective without requiring technical expertise.
Morrow has played in a variety of musical contexts over the years, including Derek Bailey’s Company at London’s ICA in 1981. He has also provided sympathetic musical accompaniment for numerous poets over the years, including
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
. In April 1980 Morrow and Swedish sound poet Sten Hanson organized the 12th International Sound Poetry Festival, at Washington Square Church in New York City.
In 1973, Morrow organized a Summer Solstice celebration, the first in a series staged annually in New York until 1989. Increasingly Morrow has shown an interest into integrating radio and television broadcasts into these celebratory occasions. Amongst his other large scale public events Citywave, realised on the streets of Copenhagen in 1985, involved around 2000 participants, including folk singers, bell ringers, rock groups, marching bands, a helicopter and clowns on bicycles.,
In 2010 Finnish pianist Ilmo Ranta performed a concert of Morrow’s piano music at the
Sibelius Academy
The Sibelius Academy ( fi, Taideyliopiston Sibelius-Akatemia, sv, Sibelius-Akademin vid Konstuniversitetet) is part of the University of the Arts Helsinki and a university-level music school which operates in Helsinki and Kuopio, Finland. It als ...
in Helsinki. The programme included his “Requiem for the Victims of Kent State for Solo Piano”, “Soundpiece for Rock Amplified Piano” and more recent “Mozart Reconstructions: Sonatas K331, 332 for piano and midi piano, a 3D spatial work with sound environments.
The Little Charlie Festival, a five-day celebration of Morrow’s life and work held in New York City during Fall 2010, gave some indication of the category-defying scope of his creative activity.
Commercial work
It was
Art Garfunkel
Arthur Ira Garfunkel (born November 5, 1941) is an American singer, poet, and actor. He is best known for his partnership with Paul Simon in the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel.
Highlights of Garfunkel's solo music career include one top-10 ...
, one of Morrow’s classmates at Columbia College, who introduced him to the commercial music business. Morrow then worked as arranger and line producer for
John H. Hammond at
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
, and provided arrangements for hit recordings by
Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo consisting of the singer-songwriter Paul Simon and the singer Art Garfunkel. They were one of the best-selling music groups of the 1960s, and their biggest hits—including the electric remix of " ...
,
The Rascals
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
,
Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Fudge is an American rock band known predominantly for their slow extended heavy rock arrangements of contemporary hit songs, such as their hit cover of The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On".
The band's original line–up—vocalist a ...
and The Balloon Farm.
Sound installations
Morrow installations range from sound drawers and cabinets to wind sails to electronic environments.
In 1969, painter Carol Brown invited Morrow to create a piece for the Marilyn Monroe Show at New York’s Janis Gallery. He created a
soundscape
A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, r ...
portrait of Monroe using collaged found sound.
Venues for Morrow’s later sound installations have included Knoll Furniture Retrospective (
Louvre Museum
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, Paris), General Gas Exhibit (Chicago
Museum of Science and Industry), 2nd Acustica International (
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...
, New York), an arctic sound room for the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle, Bonn, the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
’s Hall of Planet Earth in New York and the Memorial Railroad Museum in Altoona,PA.
In 2000 Morrow created audio work for the
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...
exhibition Vikings. He has also created audio tours for Kennedy Space Center, the Great Platte River Road Memorial Archway and the Empire State Building, New York.
Morrow experiments with spatialization and capture of multi-dimensional events led to the development of
3D audio effect True3D spatial software and systems. Installations include
Foster and Partners
Foster + Partners is a British architectural, engineering, and integrated design practice founded in 1967 as Foster Associates by Norman Foster. It is the largest architectural firm in the UK with over 1,500 employees in 13 studios worldwide.
...
Forteleza Hall at S.C. Johnson Company HQ in Racine, WI, The Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Study Center in Anchorage, Alaska, Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and the Football Performance Center at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.
Film, television and soundtracks
Morrow has created feature film soundtracks for Frances Thompson’s NASA
Moonwalk One,
Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011) was a British film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. His films in the main were liberal adaptation ...
’s
Altered States
''Altered States'' is a 1980 American science fiction body horror film directed by Ken Russell and based on the novel of the same name by playwright and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. The film was adapted from Chayefsky's 1978 novel and is his f ...
, and
Eleanor Antin
Eleanor Antin (née Fineman; February 27, 1935) is an American performance artist, film-maker, installation artist, conceptual artist and feminist artist.
Early life and education
Eleanor Fineman was born in the Bronx on February 27, 1935. Her pa ...
's Man Without A World. He designed music and sound for the 13 parts of Time-Life's "America" series. His video ''Paul's Story: A Sami in New York,'' premiered at The
Margaret Mead Film Festival The Margaret Mead Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spec ...
, December 1989. In 2007 he provided score and sound design for
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Jean-Jacques Lebel (born in Paris on June 30, 1936) is a French artist. His father was also a poet, translator, poetry publisher, political activist, art collector, and art historian. Besides his heterogeneous artworks and poetry, Lebel is also k ...
’s film ''Les Avatars du Venus.''
Other media
Morrow co-produced T.C. McLuhan’s audio version of her bestselling documentary portrait of Native American life, Touch the Earth.
The interactive CD-ROM, ScruTiny in the Great Round, featuring Morrow’s music and visual art by Tennessee Rice Dixon and Jim Gasperini won the 1996 Grand Prix du Jury Milia d'Or in Cannes, France.
Morrow created a microminiature
Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led ...
Clock Symphony program for
Nam Jun Paik
Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...
's Zapping SLZ104PAC
Swatch Watch and transformations of
Chopin piano works for Paik's video installation at the
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles ( ; french: Château de Versailles ) is a former royal residence built by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, France. The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 19 ...
.
Public presentations
Morrow was Visiting Professor of Spatial Sound, VMK Esbjerg, Denmark, 2007-2009. He has lectured on sound art and design at numerous prestigious venues including The Aspen Design Conference, Columbia University, Oberlin College, Helsinki University of Technology, Copenhagen University, Cornell University and St. Martin’s College of Art, London.
In 2004 Morrow participated in the Future of Sound event at the British Academy Awards, co-produced the New Sound New York Sound Cube show at The Kitchen, and had a solo sound art show in the MUU Gallery, Helsinki.
Morrow currently resides in Helsinki, Finland and Barton, Vermont.
Discography
''The Birth of the War God Music'' by Charlie Morrow, texts by Jerome Rothenberg, sung by The Western Wind. (Laurel Records, 1988)
''Toot!'' (Triple CD, XI Recordings, 2011)
''Toot!'' - XI Records
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References
External links
Charlie Morrow website
New Wilderness Foundation website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morrow, Charlie
American male composers
21st-century American composers
1942 births
Living people
People from Rutherford, New Jersey
Jingle composers
Mannes School of Music alumni
American sound artists
21st-century American male musicians
Columbia College (New York) alumni