Richard Lerman (born Dec 5 1944 in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, CA; died June 21 2025) was a

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

and

sound art Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary Time-based media, time-based Artistic medium, medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in Cross-genr ...

ist whose, "work...centers around his custom-made

contact microphone A contact microphone is a form of microphone that senses audio vibrations through contact with solid objects. Unlike normal air microphones, contact microphones are almost completely insensitive to air vibrations but transduce only structure-bor ...

s of unusually small size,"Layne, Joslyn (2011).
Richard Lerman
, ''AllMusic.com''; and Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, eds. (2001). ''All Music Guide: The Definitive Guide to Popular Music'', p.1103. . including, " piezo disks and other

transducers A transducer is a device that converts energy from one form to another. Usually a transducer converts a signal in one form of energy to a signal in another. Transducers are often employed at the boundaries of automation, measurement, and contro ...

".Richard Lerman
''Sound Generantion'' named him "the internet father of the piezo disk" in 2013. He studied with

Alvin Lucier Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American experimental composer and sound artist. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Ar ...

Gordon Mumma Gordon Mumma (born March 30, 1935, in Framingham, Massachusetts) is an American composer. He is known most for his work with electronics, many devices of which he builds himself, and for his performances on horn. Biography Mumma entered the Univer ...

, and

David Tudor David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 – August 13, 1996) was an American pianist and composer of experimental music. Life and career Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefa ...

. Lerman received both his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Music, 1966) and Master of Fine Arts (Film and Theatre Arts, 1970) at Brandeis University. He was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in Sound Art ( Video & Audio) for 1987-88. He also worked in

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, having had a show at

MOMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, and worked with advanced programming in DVD creation. Lerman's work was often site-specific. Pieces include ''Travelon Gamelon'', for amplified bicycles (1978), performed worldwide many times, most recently at the FKL Symposium in Cagliari, Sardiniam in Sept 2017 and for a retrospective of his work at Arizona State University; ''A Seasonal Mapping of the Sonoran Desert'', which includes cactus needles plucked by rainfall; and ''Threading History,'' the collaboration with

Mona Higuchi Mona may refer to: People *Mona (name), a female given name, nickname and surname * Mona (Angolan footballer) (born 1997) * Mona (Brazilian footballer), Marcelo Alexandre Pires Correia (born 1973) *Mona, ring name of American wrestler Nora Greenw ...

, for which he recorded prison camp barbed wire. In the 1980s he lived in Boston and taught at the Museum of Fine Arts School and at the

Center for Advanced Visual Studies The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) has its origins in the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an arts and research center founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes ...

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

.Hugh Marlais Davies and Apollohuis (1986). ''Echo: The Images of Sound'', p.92. He then taught sound and interdisciplinary arts at Arizona State University's West Campus Program in Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance beginning in 1994, becoming a Full Professor in 2001, and continued teaching there until his retirement.

Sources

External links

*http://www.SonicJourneys.com 1944 births American male composers 21st-century American composers Living people 21st-century American male musicians {{US-composer-20thC-stub