Trimpin biography of michaels
Trimpin (b. 1951)
- By Sheila Farr
- Posted 4/26/2016
- HistoryLink.org Essay 11204
Gerhard Trimpin -- known since the 1960s by the single moniker Trimpin -- is an internationally acclaimed composer, musician, visual artist, and inventor. A native of Germany who has lived in Seattle since 1980, Trimpin creates extraordinary interactive installations of sound and kinetic sculpture, as well as commissioned compositions for dance, symphony, and opera. He has collaborated with the composer Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997) and with the Kronos Quartet, the Eliot Feld Dance Company, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, among many others. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997, and is the subject of the documentary film Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (Esmonde, 2009) and the book Trimpin: Contraptions for Art and Sound (University of Washington Press, 2011). His 2011 opera, The Gurs Zyklus, was commissioned by Stanford University, where he was artist in residence, and funded by Creative Capital, New York. The Seattle Symphony commissioned his site-specific composition Above, Below, and in Between, which debuted at Benaroya Hall in 2015.
Installations, Performances, Commissions
Despite all that, Trimpin was once called "one of Seattle’s best kept secrets" (Strauss, The New York Times). Although thousands have admired Trimpin's tornado of self-playing instruments at Experience Music Project, walked by his elegant 1994 water-music installation Hydraulis at Key Arena, and enjoyed the wind-up-toy wizardry of On: Matter, Monkeys, and the King, next to the rolling walkway in Sea-Tac International Airport -- most have probably never heard of the artist.
At his Madrona neighborhood studio, Trimpin stores boxes filled with newspaper and magazine stories about him in German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Russian, and Japanese (not to mention English) -- enough to daunt the most dedicated researcher. In addition to the performances and commissi
In his creative experiments, Trimpin engages the visual, spatial, and kinetic properties of sound to “play instruments in such a way that no matter how complex the composition of the timing, it can be pushed over the limits.”
Trimpin, Image from the film Trimpin: The Sound of Invention, 2009. Credit: Peter Esmonde.
About the Residency
In Spring 2013, sound artist Trimpin presented a lecture/demonstration for the class “Music and Technology” taught by Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director of the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. Over the course of the semester, Ziporyn brought twenty prominent sound and multimedia artists to campus for lectures, demonstrations, workshops and performances open to both students and the general public alike.
The 2013 Spring Sound Series series laid the groundwork for MIT Sounding, an innovative annual performance series that blurs the boundaries between contemporary and world music founded by Evan Ziporyn in 2014.
The 2013 MIT Spring Sound Series is presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and MIT Music and Theater Arts.
Schedule
Past Event
Artist Lecture and Demonstration
Course 21.M, “Music and Technology”
April 17, 2013 /12:00pm
Biography
Trimpin is a German-born composer and sound artist who has lived and worked in Seattle since 1979. His sound sculptures, installations and set designs have been developed in collaboration with artists such as Merce Cunningham, Samuel Beckett, Conlon Nancarrow and the Kronos Quartet. His work has appeared at museums, galleries, and festivals across the Pacific Northwest. The documentary film TRIMPIN: The Sound of Invention premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur “Genuis” grant.
Combining digital technology with everyday salvaged materials, Trimpin has invented ways of playing everything from giant marimbas to a 60-foot stack of guitars using MIDI command
Seattle Symphony debuts avant-garde Seattle sound sculptor Trimpin's site-specific composition "Above, Below, and In Between" at Benaroya Hall on May 1, 2015.
- By Sheila Farr
- Posted 4/28/2016
- HistoryLink.org Essay 11209
On May 1, 2015, Seattle Symphony debuts avant-garde Seattle sound sculptor Trimpin's (b. 1951) site-specific composition "Above, Below, and in Between" at Benaroya Hall. (The symphony's composer-in-residence, Trimpin was born Gerhard Trimpin, but since the 1960s is known by the single moniker.) Before an overflow crowd, conductor Ludovic Morlot (b. 1973) waves his baton at the Microsoft 3-D camera "Kinect," stretching the bounds of his conducting experience. In the Grand Lobby of Benaroya Hall, audience members sit in a semi-circle facing the conductor, as if they were the orchestra. String and horn players fan out above and behind them on the mezzanine. A single soprano vocalist moves among the listeners. The movements of Morlot’s baton activate a prepared piano, a set of concert chimes, and other electro-mechanical instruments instruments positioned among the nine columns of the lobby, so that -- with music emanating from all sides -- the audience is immersed in mind-tingling sounds.
Sculptures in Sound
Since moving to Seattle from his native Germany in 1980, Trimpin has produced a steady flow of hard-to-categorize sound sculptures, often for venues in New York, Europe, and across the United States. He composed music for eccentric instruments that he built of salvaged materials and operated electronically via various kinds of scanners and computer programs. Over the years Trimpin collaborated with dance and theater companies, as well as with other artists at local performance venues including Seattle’s On The Boards and Meany Hall. Trimpin also created site-specific kinetic sound sculpture installations for art museums in the Northwest and abroad.
In the late 1980s, during a stint as resident artist at the Sweeli .