Noah Flynn Kaplan (born September 11, 1984), known professionally as Noah K, is an American composer, saxophonist, and record producer.

Early life and education

K grew up in Topanga Canyon, California. During high school he performed jazz professionally throughout Los Angeles. In 2002, he composed and performed music on the ABC television series ''

Once and Again ''Once and Again'' is an American family drama television series that aired on ABC from September 21, 1999, to April 15, 2002. It depicts the family of a single mother and her romance with a single father. It was created by Marshall Herskovitz a ...

''. He is a graduate of the

New England Conservatory of Music The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a Private college, private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music Music school, conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The ...

, where he studied with

Joe Maneri Joseph Gabriel Esther Maneri (February 9, 1927 – August 24, 2009), was an American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player. Violinist Mat Maneri is his son. Boston Microtonal Society In 1988, Maneri founded the Boston Microtonal Society, ...

and

Jerry Bergonzi Jerry Bergonzi (born October 21, 1947) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and educator. Early life and education Bergonzi received a B.A. in Music Education from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1971 and is the founde ...

. He was Maneri's last student. After graduating, K moved to Brooklyn, New York, and traveled monthly to

Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a popu ...

for lessons in composition, theory, and improvisation with Maneri until Maneri's death in 2009. K received an MFA in Music Composition from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 2015 where his advisor was

Steven Mackey Steven ("Steve") Mackey (born February 14, 1956) is an American composer, guitarist, and music educator. Life As a musician growing up listening to and performing vernacular American musics as well as classical music, Mackey's compositions are i ...

. In 2018 he was awarded the Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship from the

Princeton University Graduate School The Graduate School of Princeton University is the main graduate school of Princeton University. Founded in 1869, the school is responsible for all of Princeton's master's and doctoral degree programs in the humanities, social sciences, natural sc ...

. He has been the recipient of composition fellowships from the

Tanglewood Music Center The Tanglewood Music Center is an annual summer music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, United States, in which emerging professional musicians participate in performances, master classes and workshops. The center operates as a part of the Tanglew ...

and the

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra The New Jersey Symphony, formerly the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, is an American symphony orchestra based in the state of New Jersey. The New Jersey Symphony is the state orchestra of New Jersey, performing classical subscription concert serie ...

. In 2022, he received a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University. He has been Visiting Professor of Music and Adjunct Professor at NYU's Gallatin School, where he co-founded the 4th Wave Music Intensive.

Career

Dollshot

K co-leads the

dream pop Dream pop (also typeset as dreampop) is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such as ...

band Dollshot for which he writes music and performs. The band's eponymous debut album was released in 2011 and includes arrangements of songs by

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-kno ...

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 ...

as well as original songs by Noah K and Wes Matthews. A music video for their song "Lalande", directed by

Matt Mahurin Matthew S. Mahurin (born January 31, 1959) is an American illustrator, photographer and film director. Mahurin's illustrations appear in ''Time'', ''Newsweek'', ''Mother Jones'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''Esquire'', ''Forbes'', and ''The New York Time ...

, premiered on

WNYC WNYC is the trademark and a set of call letters shared by WNYC (AM) and WNYC-FM, a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations located in New York City. WNYC is owned by New York Public Radio (NYPR), a nonprofit organization that di ...

Soundcheck A sound check is the preparation that takes place before a concert, speech, or similar performance to adjust the sound on the venue's sound reinforcement or public address system. The performer and the audio engineers run through a small port ...

in July 2017. A video for a second single, "Swan Gone", directed by Pablo Delcan, premiered on

BlackBook ''BlackBook'' is an arts and culture magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase ...

in October 2018. In December 2018, Dollshot performed three songs from ''Lalande'' live on WNYC and were interviewed by Soundcheck host

John Schaefer John Schaefer is an American radio host and author. A longtime host at WNYC, Schaefer began hosting the influential radio shows ''New Sounds'' in 1982 and ''Soundcheck'' in 2002, and has produced many different programs for other New York Public ...

With Giacomo Merega

One of the musicians on ''Dollshot'' is bass guitarist Giacomo Merega, whom Noah K met when they were students in Boston. Their first recording, ''The Light and Other Things'', was made in 2006; the band was a

free improvisation Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its ...

trio that included

David Tronzo David Tronzo (born 1957) is an American guitarist, best known for his innovation of pairing the techniques of electric slide guitar with the genres of bebop, modern jazz, rock, downtown music, and experimental music. He has recorded with former D ...

on guitar. The pair also played on ''Watch the Walls Instead'', another set of freely improvised performances, this time in trio, quartet, and quintet formats. They both played on trumpeter Joe Moffett's ''Ad Faunum'' and were co-leaders with Moffett on ''Crows and Motives'', a set of improvised pieces that "arose between recording three-voice extracts from one of Renaissance composer

Josquin des Prez Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) was a composer of High Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he was a central figure of the ...

's settings of ''L'homme armé''."

Noah Kaplan Quartet

Merega is a member of the Noah Kaplan Quartet. Their debut album ''Descendants'' was released by

Hathut Hathut Records is a Swiss record company and label founded by Werner Xavier Uehlinger in 1974 that specializes in jazz and classical music. The name of the label comes from the artwork of Klaus Baumgartner. Hathut encompasses the labels hat ART, h ...

in 2011. It was followed by ''Cluster Swerve'' in 2017, and ''Out of the Hole'' in 2020. In its four-star review of the album, ''

DownBeat ' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...

'' magazine stated, "From track to track there is a consistent sense of rumination, where every intervallic brushstroke feels like the work of a painter meticulously applying and manipulating his medium to the canvas." K has recorded or performed with Joe Morris,

Anthony Coleman Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on '' Cobra'', ''Kristallnacht'', ''The Big Gundown'', ''Archery'', and ''Spillane'' and helped push modern Jewish music in ...

Mauro Pagani Mauro Pagani (born 5 February 1946) is an Italian musician and singer. Pagani was born in Chiari, Lombardy. A multi-instrumentalist, he made his debut in the music world in 1970 as violinist and founding member of the progressive rock band Premi ...

Peter Erskine Peter Erskine (born June 5, 1954) is an American jazz drummer who was a member of the jazz fusion groups Weather Report and Steps Ahead. Early life and education Erskine was born in Somers Point, New Jersey, U.S. He began playing the drum ...

Alan Pasqua Alan Pasqua (born June 28, 1952) is an American rock and jazz pianist. He studied at Indiana University and the New England Conservatory of Music. His album ''Standards'' with drummer Peter Erskine was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2008. As a ...

, Rinde Eckert, Jason Nazary, Mike Pride,

Tyshawn Sorey Tyshawn Sorey (born July 8, 1980) is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, and professor of contemporary music. Sorey has received accolades for performances, recordings, and compositions ranging from improvised solo percussion to opera, ...

Mat Maneri Mat Maneri (born October 4, 1969) is an American composer, violin, and viola player. He is the son of the saxophonist Joe Maneri and Sonja Maneri. Career Maneri has recorded with Cecil Taylor, Guerino Mazzola, Matthew Shipp, Joe Morris, Ger ...

, and

Collaboration with Hampton Fancher

K began working with writer

Hampton Fancher Hampton Lansden Fancher (born July 18, 1938) is an American actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker, best known for co-writing the 1982 neo-noir science fiction film ''Blade Runner'' and its 2017 sequel ''Blade Runner 2049,'' based on the novel ''Do ...

in 2010 when they collaborated on the spoken word cantata ''Rat Lunch''. In 2016 they began collaborating on an opera, ''Salvation'', for which Fancher wrote the story and libretto. The DVD of

Michael Almereyda Michael Almereyda (born April 7, 1960) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Early work Almereyda studied art history at Harvard but dropped out after three years to pursue filmmaking. He acquired a Hollywood agent on ...

's documentary of Fancher, ''Escapes'' (2017), includes a video portrait of Fancher shot by K.

Other

K is the editor of the English edition of

Ivan Wyschnegradsky Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky; Is also transliterated as Vïshnegradsky, Wyshnegradsky, Wischnegradsky, Vishnegradsky, or Wishnegradsky (after he emigrated to France, he used "Wyschnegradsky" as spelling for his surname)., group=n ( ; Septe ...

's ''Manual of Quarter-Tone Harmony.'' He is a co-founder of Underwolf Records and works as a record producer for the label.

Playing style

As a member of his quartet, he has played in a style influenced by the

microtonal Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of tw ...

approach of Maneri. ''The New York City Jazz Record'' reviewer of their first album described his playing: "Kaplan's shifting pitches give his flowing lines, sliding across and between notes, even more vocal inflections than a regular hornman might impart, but he tends to be less speech-like in his phrasing and more likely to evoke animal similes in his flexible expressiveness, ranging from pained braying to exuberant crows." More generally, as an improviser, he "is devoted to quarter-tone improvisation and its integration into his music as a structural principle", wrote ''The New York City Jazz Record''.

Personal life

K is married to vocalist Rosie K.

Discography

Bibliography

* Wyschnegradsky, Ivan; Noah Kaplan (editor); Rosalie Kaplan (translator). ''Manual of Quarter-Tone Harmony''. Underwolf Editions: New York 2017, .

References

External links

Official website
*
"Dollshot's Experimental Dream-Pop" , Live In Studio on WNYCNotes From Underground article by Noah K and Rosie K (New Music Box)Jazz Session Interview with Noah Kaplan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Noah K 21st-century classical composers Living people American experimental musicians Free improvisation saxophonists American jazz saxophonists American male saxophonists Avant-garde jazz musicians People from Topanga, California 1984 births 21st-century American saxophonists 21st-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians Jazz musicians from California