Lansky, Paul

Lansky, Paul, American composer and teacher; b. N.Y., June 18, 1944. He was a student of Perle and Weisgall at Queens Coll. of the City Univ. of N.Y. (B.A., 1966) and of Babbitt, Cone, and Kim at Princeton Univ. (Ph.D., 1973, with the diss. Affine Music). In 1965-66 he played horn in the Dorian Wind Quintet. He taught at Princeton Univ. (from 1969), where he also served as dept. chair (1990–97). He received NEA fellowships (1981, 1988, 1992), an American Academy and Instute of Arts and Letters Award (1977), and commissions from the Koussevitzky Fdn. (1981) and the Fromm Fdn. (1985). He served on the boards of Perspectives of New Music, the Fromm Foundation, and the International Music Assn. In 1994, with Joel Chadabe and Neil Rolnick, he founded the Electronic Music Foundation in Albany, N.Y.

Works

chamber:Modal Fantasy for Piano (1970); Fanfare for 2 Horns (1976); Crossworks for Piano, Flute, Clarinet, Violin, and Cello (1978); Dance Suite for Piano (1977); Serenade for Violin, Viola, and Piano (1978); As I/for String Trio and Tape (1981–82); Values of Time for String Quartet, Wind Quartet, and Tape (1987); Stroll for Piano, Flute, Cello, Marimba, and Tape (1988); Hop for Marimba and Violin (1993); Dancetracks, for an Improvising Guitarist for Electric Guitar and Tape (1994). computer:mild und leise (1973); Artifice (on Ferdinand’s Reflection) (1975–76); Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion (1978–79); Folk-Images (1980–91); As it grew dark (1983); Guy’s Harp (1984); Idle Chatter (1985); Wasting (1985; in collaboration with B. Garton and A. Milburn); just_more_idle_chatter (1987); Notjust-moreidlechatter (1988); Smalltalk (1988); The Lesson (1989); Talk-show (1989); Not So Heavy Metal (1989); Late August (1989); QuakerBridge (1990); NightTraffic (1990); The Sound of Two Hands (1990); Table’s Clear (1990); Now and Then (1991); Word Color (1992); Memory Pages (1993); Still Time (1994). vocal:Three Campion Choruses for Chorus (1992).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire