Gordon Monahan (born 1956 in

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. It is at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River, the south end of the Rideau Canal. Kingston is near the Thousand Islands, ...

) is a Canadian pianist and composer of experimental music. He has been active since at least 1978. Along with his own work, he has performed works by other composers such as

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 Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

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, microt ...

Udo Kasemets Udo Kasemets (November 16, 1919 – January 19, 2014) was a Canadian composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, piano and electroacoustic works. He was one of the first composers to adopt the methods of John Cage, and was also a conductor, lecturer ...

and

Roberto Paci Dalò Roberto Paci Dalò is an Italian author, composer and musician, film maker and theatre director, sound and visual artist, radio-maker. He is the co-founder and director of the performing arts ensemble Giardini Pensili and he has been the artis ...

. He has also created site-specific sound installations. In 1992-93 he was artist-in-residence with the DAAD in Berlin where he lived until 2006.See literature Linda Jansma and Carsten Seiffarth (eds.): ''Gordon Monahan'', 2011 an
Biography
on singuhr.de (Berlin), retrieved September 8, 2012

Life and career

Gordon Monahan was born on June 1, 1956 in

. He originally was interested in a being a physicist and studied physics at the University of Ottawa from 1974-1976. He transferred to

Mount Allison University Mount Allison University (also Mount A or MtA) is a Canadian primarily undergraduate liberal arts university located in Sackville, New Brunswick, founded in 1839. Mount Allison was the first university in the British Empire to award a baccal ...

where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music in 1980 after four years of study. There his teachers included Janet Hammock (piano) and Michael R. Miller (composition). After graduating he lived in Toronto for seven years, and then moved to New York City in 1987.

Awards

Monahan won first prize at the 1984 CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers. He is one of six Laureates to receive Governor General's Awards for Visual and Media Arts in 2013. * 2016: ''Sound Artist'' of the City of

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

, Germany.

Notable works

*Piano Mechanics (1981-1986) *Speaker Swinging (1982) *Piano Mechanics (1982) *Long Aeolian Piano (1984/88) *Music From Nowhere (1989) *Aquaeolian Whirlpool (1990) *Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather (1996) *Multiple Machine Matrix (1994-8) *Theremin in the Rain (2003) *Theremin Pendulum (2008) *Resonant Platinum Records (2011/12, Soundinstallation at Singuhr Hörgalerie, Berlin).

Literature

Linda Jansma and Carsten Seiffarth (Eds.): ''Gordon Monahan: Seeing Sound, Sound Art, Performance and Music, 1978-2011,'' 159 pages plus DVD. Toronto : Doris McCarthy Gallery t al. 2011 (Exhibition Catalogue),

References

External links

Official SiteBiography
at the Canadian Encyclopedia
Video of his piece "Speaker Swinging"Dancing to Our Own Rhythm
at the Silhouette Newspaper (McMaster University ''Dance Brain'' Project) 1956 births Living people Artists from Ontario Canadian composers Canadian male composers Canadian contemporary artists Canadian sound artists Musicians from Kingston, Ontario Canadian male pianists 21st-century Canadian pianists 21st-century Canadian male musicians Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts winners Mount Allison University alumni University of Ottawa alumni {{Canada-composer-stub