Dan Siegler is an American composer and sound artist from New York City. During his career, Siegler has ventured into a number of mediums, including dance, live theater, and television. Siegler is a recipient of the

Bessie Awards The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, ...

for his work with

Pam Tanowitz Pam Tanowitz (born 1969) is an American dancer, choreographer, professor, and founder of the company, Pam Tanowitz Dance. She is a current staff member at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts where she teaches dance and choreography. ...

Early life and education

Siegler was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and began playing piano at the age of four. Siegler has stated that he developed a love for

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States an ...

in high school, where he was also involved in friends' theater and dance performances. He attended

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...

Bennington, Vermont Bennington is a New England town, town in Bennington County, Vermont, Bennington County, Vermont, United States. It is one of two shire towns (county seats) of the county, the other being Manchester (town), Vermont, Manchester. As of the 2020 ...

, where he received his bachelor's degree (B.A.) 1984.

Career

In 1997, Siegler was a recipient of the

Abe Olman Abe Olman (December 20, 1887Many sources state his birth year as 1888, but this appears to be an error. – January 4, 1984), born Abraham Olshewitz, was an American songwriter and music publisher. He composed a number of successful ragtime an ...

Scholarship, whose recipients have included artists such as

John Legend John Roger Stephens (born December 28, 1978), known professionally as John Legend, is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and record producer. He began his musical career by working behind the scenes, playing piano on Lauryn Hill's " Ever ...

. Siegler is a recipient of the New York Dance and Performance Awards, more commonly known as the

, having received the award for his work with

. During his collaborative efforts with Tanowitz, Siegler notably employed unconventional sounds such as that of running water and "staticky buzzes" to compliment instruments such as the piano and bass. According to ''The New York Times'', Siegler produced the original score to the second half of Tanowitz's "the story progresses as if in a dream of glittering surfaces". Siegler was a 2019 resident at

Art Omi Art Omi, formerly Omi International Arts Center, is a non-profit international arts organization located in Columbia County, New York, Columbia County in Ghent, New York. The organization provides Artist-in-residence, residencies for writers, art ...

and a composer-resident at Exploring the Metropolis. (EtM) Siegler also received a virtual commission from the

Guggenheim Museum in New York The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously ex ...

, and was formerly an artist-in-residence at the UCLA Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA). As a lecturer, Siegler has taught at the

Mason Gross School of the Arts Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is named for Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers. Mason Gross offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, Theater, Digi ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

. Additionally, Siegler has written for publications such as the New York-based ''

Gothamist Gothamist LLC is the operator, or in some cases franchisor, of eight city-centric websites that focused on news, events, food, culture, and other local coverage. It was founded in 2003 by Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung. In March 2017, Joe Ricketts, ...

''.

Concrète Jungle

Siegler is noted for his work of sound art ''Concrète Jungle,'' which debuted in 2019. Citing inspiration from the ''

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, ...

'' method of electroacoustic music, ''Concrète Jungle'' was described by ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' as a piece of art that "employs urban sounds, sampled and reorganized, to evoke a bygone New York City". ''Concrète Jungle'' was composed through the assemblage of recorded conversations with hundreds of New York residents, with ambient sounds complimented by improvised dancing.

Musical style

According to ''The New Yorker'', Siegler's work has been influenced by the avant-garde

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

genre, hip-hop group

Public Enemy "Public enemy" is a term which was first widely used in the United States in the 1930s to describe individuals whose activities were seen as criminal and extremely damaging to society, though the phrase had been used for centuries to describe p ...

, as well as No Wave. In 2013,''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' described Siegler's work as one that "teases and goads with brass cadences, drums and the murmur of surf". Siegler has cited composers

Hildegard Westerkamp Hildegard Westerkamp (born April 8, 1946, in Osnabrück, Germany) is a Canadian composer, radio artist, teacher and sound ecologist of German origin.Kirk MacKenzie. "Westerkamp, Hildegard." ''Grove Music Online''. ''Oxford Music Online''. Oxford ...

and

Pierre Schaeffer Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innov ...

as a major influence on his work.

Personal life

Siegler married

in 1998. As of 2016, Siegler is a resident of

Chelsea, Manhattan Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The area's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, the Hudson River and West Street to the west, and Sixth Avenue to the east, with its northern b ...

Selected works

* ''Concrète Jungle'' (2018-2021) * ''Ghost Sentence'' (2016) * ''Read the Following Before Playing'' (2015) * ''Untitled 4, Pour Hommes'' (2014) * ''The Spectators'' (2013) * ''St Newey Blues'' (2012) * ''The Party I Didn't Go To'' (2010) * ''Unnatural Sounds'' (2010) * ''Be In The Gray With Me'' (2009);

Bessie Award The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, ...

winner * ''The Other Side of the Street'' (2008) * ''Errors'' (2007)

References

External links

Dan Siegler's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siegler, Dan 21st-century American composers American sound artists American experimental composers Bennington College alumni 20th-century American pianists 21st-century American pianists Bessie Award winners Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American male composers 21st-century American male musicians Composers from New York City 20th-century American male musicians American male pianists People from Chelsea, Manhattan