Electronic Press Book
The Many Sides of Elodie Lauten - by Kyle Gann, atsjournal/ postclassic "Postminimalist, neoclassicist, meditationist, New Ageist, improviser, jazzer, opera composer, Elodie Lauten is one of the most Protean composers of recent years, with many sides to her personality, but they all sound like her. The Death of Don Juan epitomizes what I think of as her quintessential mystical style, while Waking in New York has more of a pop sensibility, with singers drawn from Broadway, gospel, and operatic idioms. I've always told Elodie that Waking in New York reminds me of Erik Satie's masterpiece Socrate in its impassive melodies over kaleidoscopically changing harmonies. Lauten's brand-new opera Orfreo (that's not a typo: the subtitle is "The Orphic death of Ray Johnson") demonstrates how Baroque she can sound when working with classical instruments like harpsichord, as in her large-scale cantata Deus ex Machina. Her synthesizer improvisation in Tronik Involutions show her at her most sparklingly cosmic - more richly textured and more harmonically motionless than any New Age music I've ever heard. And I'll continue adding some of the early pieces from which I first knew her work, the early piano pieces and Concerto for Piano with Orchestral Memory. I've also put up one movement from Variations on the Orange Cycle played by pianist Lois Svard, a haunting, Riley-ish, reconstructed improvisation, and someday I'll post the entire piece. It takes at least this much music to demonstrate the tremendous range of Lauten's universalist imagination."
Biography
The music of composer and keyboardist Elodie Lauten is tonal/modal, richly textured with driving rhythms, surprising chord changes and occasional dramatic dissonance, but always ear-friendly. She has been called a pioneer of post-minimalism. Her music has been presented in New York by the Lincoln Center Festival, WNYC, The Whitney Museum, The Kitchen, the Performing Garage, La Mama, the SEM Ensemble; also by the Chicago Arts Festival, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Music Gallery in Toronto, and the Paris Museum of Modern Art, to name a few. Her pieces span categories and styles, with fully scored as well as improvised music, piano music, musical theater, orchestral, chamber and electronic music but her landmarks are unique "neo-operas" evolving or deconstructing the form: The Death of Don Juan, The Deus Ex Machina Cycle and Orfreo both scored for Baroque ensemble, and Waking in New York, setting the poetry of Allen Ginsberg.
Her 30 releases appear on a variety of labels: Lovely Music, Point/Polygram, O.O. Discs, New Tone (Italy), Frog Peak, Studio 21, Pitch, Capstone, Studio 21, 4-Tay, and L.E.S.P.A. An extensive reissue of her piano music has been released by Unseen Worlds in 2010.
Lauten has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, the American Music Center, and the Music Liberty Initiative as well as chamber and orchestral commissions.
Documentation on her work can be found in American Music in the 20th Century and Music Downtown, Writings from the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, New Sounds by John Schaefer, Soho: The Rise and Fall of an Artist Colony by Richard Kostelanetz, La Musica Minimalista by Giovanni Antognozzi, the Novocento music dictionary and the recently released Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene by Tim Lawrence.
Her Variations on the Orange Cycle for solo piano was included on Chamber Music America’s list of 100 best works of the 20th century (1999). Waking in New York (presented by the New York City Opera Vox in 2004) was included on Sequenza21’s list of the most influential musical compositions of the last three decades (2005). In 2008 the reissue The Death of Don Juan by Unseen Worlds was greeted by comments such as “a masterpiece of new music”. In March 2009 the Theater for the New City presented three-week run of a new work, The Two-Cents Opera, which was the subject of a 10-page article by Hyperion Magazine.
As a visual artist, she has frequently exhibited in Soho, Chelsea and the East Village in New York. A retrospective of her drawings, collages and digital art, along with works by Yoko Ono and Judy Chicago, was recently included in the Women Forward group exhibition with Yoko Ono (April-May 2009) at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn.
Born and raised in Paris, she has lived in downtown New York since the mid-70s. She holds a Master’s in Music Composition from New York University where she studied with Dinu Ghezzo and where she has also taught composition. She is currently on the faculty at the New York City College of Technology. She is a member of ASCAP. Additional information is available from: http://www.elodielauten.net.