Mark Dresser - bio
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Mark Dresser (b.
1952) has been composing and performing solo contrabass and ensemble music professionally
since 1972 throughout North America, Europe and the Far East. Emerging from
the L.A. "free" jazz scene of the early 70's, Dresser performed with
the "Black Music Infinity", led by Stanley Crouch, and included Bobby
Bradford, Arthur Blythe, David Murray, and James Newton. Concurrently he was
performing with the San Diego Symphony.
After completing B.A. and M.A. degrees at UCSD where he studied with contrabass
virtuoso Bertram Turetzky and a 1983 Fulbright Fellowship in Italy with maestro
Franco Petracchi, Dresser relocated to New York in 1986 after being invited
to join the quartet of composer/saxophonist, Anthony Braxton. Dresser played
with Braxton's longest performing quartet for nine years.
Once in NY, Dresser began working with a wide variety of musicians in the greater
New York community including Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Jane Ira Bloom, Anthony
Davis, Fred Frith, Dave Douglas, John Zorn, and others. He focused on composing
for a pair of cooperative groups, Tambastics with flutist Robert Dick, percussionist
Gerry Hemingway, and pianist Denman Maroney and the string trio, ARCADO, with
violinist Mark Feldman and cellist Hank Roberts. Numerous European tours, awards,
six CD's, and several commissions resulted, including "For Not the Law,"
a composition for ARCADO and orchestra from WDR Radio of Cologne Germany, "Armadillo"
for ARCADO and the WDR Big Band, and "Bosnia," a work written for
the Trio du Clarinettes of France and ARCADO.
His current collaborative projects include the trio, C/D/E, master drummer Andrew
Cyrille and with multi-reed player virtuoso, Marty Ehrlich, a duo, trio and
quartet with hyperpianist, Denman Maroney, the Marks Brothers with fellow bassist
Mark Helias, a duo with the cello virtuoso, Frances-Marie Uitti , a duo with
the gifted drummer Susie Ibarra, and a duo with celebrated trombonist, Ray Anderson,
.
Since 1999, Mark Dresser's trio includes flutist Matthias Ziegler and pianist
Denman Maroney. Their electroacoustic performance inspired video artist, Tom
Leeser to create two video works, Subtonium and Sonomatopoeia which the trio
performs live in performance in addition to “Chronicles of an Asthmatic
Stripper” a solo bass collaboration with animator, Sarah Jane Lapp.
Mark Dresser's Modular Ensemble performs his chamber works. Earlier projects
include the mixed quintet, Force Green featuring Dave Douglas on trumpet, Theo
Bleckmann on voice, Denman Maroney on hyperpiano, and Phil Haynes on drums for
Soul Note. THe Mark Dresser Quartet and two different trios perform his music
for silent film. He has composed and recorded original music for two silent
film projects; the German expressionist silent film classic, The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari (Knitting Factory) and the French Surrealist collaboration of Luis
Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou. (Knitting Factory) Solo performance
is one of Dresser's specialties. He has designed custom made electronics for
purposes of amplifying normally inaudible sounds. Invocation (Knitting Factory)
is a solo CD documenting compositions from 1983-94. (Knitting Factory) Additional
original solo bass music was composed and performed for the New York Shakespeare
Festival Production of HENRY VI.
Commissions include, “Resomance” for Quarter tone flutes and String
Quartet written for Matthias Zieger (2004), “The Five Outer Planets”
for amplified contrabass written for the sculptures of Robert Taplin, “Remudadero”
for the saxophone quartet, Rova, "Banquet," a double concerto for
various flutes, contrabass and string quartet written for Swiss flute virtuoso
Matthias Ziegler.(Tzadik CD-1997), "Air to Mir," commissioned by the
McKim Fund in the Library of Congress (Marinade-Tzadik CD-2000.) Also "Althaus"
for tuba virtuoso, David LeClair with bass, cello, alto sax, and clarinet is
recorded on Marinade, “For Not the Law” for Arcado String trio and
West Deutsch Rundfunk Orchestra.
A chapter on his extended techniques for contrabass, "A Personal Pedogogy,"
appears in the book, ARCANA (Granary Books). Other articles on this research
appear in DOWNBEAT, MUSICIAN MAGAZINE, & JAZZIZ.
He has performed and recorded over one hundred CDs with some of the strongest personalities
in contemporary music and jazz including Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Jane Ira Bloom,
Bobby Bradford, Tom Cora, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Fred
Frith, Diamanda Galas, Vinny Golia, Earl Howard, Oliver Lake, George Lewis,
Misha Mengelberg, Ikue Mori, James Newton, Evan Parker, Sonny Simmons, Louis
Sclavis, Vladimir Tarasov, Henry Threadgill, and John Zorn. He was nominated
for a 2003 Grammy for the performance of Osvaldo Golijov's CD, Yiddishbbuk.
(EMI). He has given lecture demonstrations at the Julliard School, Princeton,
New England Conservatory, National Superior Conservatory of Paris, Conservatory
of Amsterdam, UCSD, and many others. He has been on faculty at New School University,
Hampshire College, and was a 2004 Lecturer in the Council of Humanities and Department
of Music at Princeton University. He is professor of music at UCSD.
PRESS
"Mark Dresser is an inventor. He also may be the
most important bassist to emerge since 1980 in jazz or classical
music." Harvey Pekar, Boston Herald,
February 1, 1998
"Mr. Dresser, a bassist who is one of the great instrumental forces in
recent American jazz outside of the mainstream...New York Times, February 25,
2000
"Dresser's Music distinguishes itself, as was also heard in his solo work,
"Invocation" by ingenuity and originality in the sound production, in
addition, by fascinating sound atmospheres.
Basler Zeitung-February 20,
2000
"He has proven to be one of the master bassists of modern jazz, perhaps
even the most exciting....his improvisational fecundity was remarkable for its
veritable ensemble-in-miniature, in which every orchestral maneuver can be
deployed to advantage... Dresser's rhythmic mooring, melodic liquidity, and timbral hues showed how sanguinely he absorbs and adapts
available contexts, emotionally and generically. The almost palpable
physicality of his pizzicato slaps and pedal plunging, the luxuriant tremolos
of his arco passages and refrains, were as
identifiable as the calling cues we associate with elder bass
paragons."
"Mark Dresser is a bassist and composer of the highest order. On
this recording of his "notated" chamber music, he presents two
challenging works that are artistically interpreted. His creativity and
sonic sensibilities need to be heard. This project, the assemblage of
musicians, and this label make an important statement about the creative
process... The performance is intriguing, engaging and profound. " Bass World, The Journal of the International
Society of Bassists 1998 review of Banquet CD-Tzadik
"To an experienced reviewer, it doesn't happen too often that the music
makes you speechless. It might be due to the genre of the
silent movie that its music is hard to verbalize; maybe the film itself can
possibly describe this wonderful music. Mark Dresser not only pays homage
to a great German movie and its expressionist director, Robert Wiene, but also makes a statement about Neo-Nationalism and
the current ethnic cleansing all over the world...This is the masterpiece of a
masterful musician..."JazzThetik on Mark
Dresser's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" * *
* * *
"You've got to pity Dresser's poor bass-you wouldn't treat a dog the way
he manhandles his instrument. But the gnarled tones and vicious swing he
tortures out of it are worth the abuse. In Dresser's slanted compositions,
the jazz tradition is only so much grist for the mill." The New Yorker,
August 18, 1997
"Mark Dresser awed the assembly with his compositions for solo bass-no one
expected to be nailed to the floor by one guy with a
four-string." Los Angeles Times
"Mr. Dresser, who constantly drove the group forward with his full,
wide-bodied sound, would solo, hammering strings with both hands, creating the
sound of several basses playing at once." N.Y. Times
"In terms of the soloist/accompaniment dichotomy, Dresser explodes the
notion of the bass as both single instrument and back-up instrument. His arco work takes on a progressively seamless singing quality
while occasional overdubs allow pizzicato dancing around the bowed
slipstream. Thus glissandi and pitch shifts are pocked and plunked and
shoved in a sometimes delirious display of talent. But even when it's
Dresser alone, sans overdubs, he's a feverish, fast-moving string group unto himself...I count this among the best anti-virtuosic solo
recordings to date. Anti-virtuosic playing is, of course, historically a
function of interrogating the inherited history of technique and beauty, and
here Dresser presents an alarmingly tense and exciting technique and a sense of
beauty as something not simply or clearly or calmly related but rather
something for which all involved must work." Andrew Bartlett -
5/4 Magazine (Review of INVOCATION on Knitting Factory Works)
"Dresser has a heroic sound and his double-, triple-, and
quadruple-stopped glisses are stunning. ...he
should sustain his position as one of the few virtuosos of so-called
avant-garde jazz." Village Voice
about the premier of "The Banquet" September '95
"Mark Dresser who is able to jump over the highest stylistic walls in a
single bound wrote a concerto that shows where this journey between
contemporary classical music and jazz can go. Dresser wrote a piece of music
that fits like a glove to the astonishing soloist, Matthias Ziegler. This
piece has many element which you can't find anymore in
"serious" music like drama, entertainment, rhythmic playfulness,
variety of sound, and room for individual improvisational development."-Neue Zurcher Zeitung
"Mark Dresser's Promethean bass-playing powers one of the heaviest bands
on the scene...Dresser consistently astonishes with his range of ideas and
effects, not to mention his towering beat." Wire Magazine
"Mr. Dresser, a bassist of dexterity and power, isn't content with dryly
cerebral experimentation or some anachronistic idea of euphoria through
tumult. He wants it all: timbral
experimentation, pulsating rhythm, strong melodies, imaginative
strategies for composing. ...his well-rehearsed
group, swinging four-way cohesion was always the issue." New York
Times, May 30, 1997
"Mark Dresser first came to national attention in 1985 as the bass player
for Anthony Braxton's now legendary quartet. The band broke up in 1994
but Dresser continues to further the vocabulary of the acoustic bass through
his eccentric and radical advancements in technique."
Jazziz- The 150 Most
Influential Artists who Moved Jazz's Changes Since 1983. September, 1998