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March
20, 2002 between sets, outside Chama, NYC. Photo by Grace Period.
Bio
A long time resident
of New Jersey, David Beardsley is one of the New York area's foremost
microtonal guitarists. Meditative and mesmerizing, his playing is steeped
in Indian music and blues as much as it is the late 20th century minimalist
tradition. Playing microtonal Just Intonation guitar and steel guitar,
David creates droning ambient soundscapes.
His string quartet
"as beautiful as a crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring
evening" was released as an audio only DVD, For Feldman (OgreOgress)
July 2006 as part of a tribute to 20th century composer Morton Feldman.
Sonic Bloom for
synthesizer and digital delays in 13 limit just intonation (1998) is featured the American
Festival of Microtonal Music CD Ideas.
He started piano at a
young age, but later moved on to guitar as a teenager and started composing
seriously in his thirties. Along the way, he developed a strong interest in
the tuning system known as just intonation - tuning by whole number ratios
from the harmonic series. David has studied North Indian Classical Music
with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Michael Harrison. He has also
attended workshops with Dean Drummond (co-leader of Newband, director of
the Harry Partch Instrumentarium) and David Hykes (Harmonic Chant aka
overtone singing).
Performances include
the American Festival of Microtonal Music, Chashama, Judson Memorial
Church, the Knitting Factory, Microfest (a Southern California
Festival of Microtonal Music), the Music Annex at the University of Pennsylvania,
New York University, Tibet House, the Trenton Avant Garde Festival and the
World Out of Tune Festival.
He has been fortunate to participate in performances of Evolution For Electric Guitar And
Orchestra by Jon
Catler (2002) and The Voice of the Bowed Guitar
by Rod Poole (2007).
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