Dan Trueman is a musician: a composer, a fiddler, a collaborator, a teacher, a developer of new instruments.
portrait by Grady Klein
Pervading all of his work is a deep curiosity about the creative process, the relationships between musicians and musical instruments/machines, and a desire to discover new music through these relationships that would be previously unimaginable. His current primary instrument/performance/composition projects are bitKlavier and Project Resonance. bitKlavier is a new musical instrument and tool that combines a conventional keyboard interface with bespoke software. As a tool, it explores the relationship between musicians and machines, devises new tuning systems, and builds changeable, flexible digital instruments. As an instrument, it aids in composing at the interface between musician and machine and facilitates musical play and pedagogy. He co-leads Project Resonance with the Bergamot Quartet, focusing on the expressive and compositional potential of new and old acoustic instruments with sympathetic strings based on the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle; this has included the design and commission of a number of new acoustic instruments, leading to numerous compositions by Dan and others.
Dan has worked with ensembles such as Sō Percussion, the Bergamot Quartet and JACK Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, Contemporaneous, as well as individuals like fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, guitarist/songwriter Monica Mugan (Trollstilt), pianists Cristina Altamura and Adam Sliwinski, scientist Naomi Leonard (Rhythm Bots), choreographers Rebecca Lazier (There Might Be Others, winner of a Bessie Award, Outstanding Music Composition) and Susan Marshall (Two Person Operating System Type 2, Rhythm Bath), poet Paul Muldoon (Olagón), director Mark DeChiazza, and many others. Dan co-founded the first ever laptop orchestra—PLOrk, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra—in 2005, an ongoing laboratory/ensemble for exploring digital musical instrument design. His records can be heard on Cantaloupe, Bridge, New Amsterdam, Cedille, and his own Many Arrows Music label.
Dan’s work has been recognized by fellowships, grants, commissions, and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Barlow Endowment, the Bessies, the Fulbright Commission, the American Composers Forum, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, Meet the Composer, among others. His tools of the trade are the first-of-its-kind Hardanger d’Amore fiddle by Salve Håkedal (played with a beautiful baroque bow by Michel Jamonneau), bitKlavier, and the ChucK music programming language by Ge Wang. Dan is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at Princeton, and he writes about his work and collaborations at Many Arrows Music Notes.
“The dazzling results mixed George Crumb’s knack for unearthly timbres, Alvin Lucier’s infinitesimally fine gradations of tone and the fierce creative audacity of Jimi Hendrix.”
— The New York Times —
