Gresham-Lancaster, Scot

Gresham-Lancaster, Scot, American composer, performer, and instrument designer; b. Redwood City, Calif., April 19, 1954. He attended classes with Robert Sheff, Robert Ashley, and Terry Riley at Mills Coll. (1972-73) while still in high school, and then studied at Canada Coll. in Redwood City, Calif. (1973-74), Cabrillo Coll. in Aptos, Calif. (1974-75), San Francisco State Univ. (1975-76), and Va. Commonwealth Univ. (1976-77). In 1989 he became a lecturer at Calif. State Univ. at Hayward. He held composer residencies at Mills Coll. (1992) and at Amsterdam’s Steim (1992, 1994, 1999), and also at the Djersassi Foundation in Calif. (1995). He has toured and recorded as a soloist and with the electroacoustic ensembles the Hub and Room, as well as with Alvin Curran, the Rova Sax Quartet, the Club Foot Orch., and the Dutch ambient group NYX. Gresham-Lancaster is a technical advisor to David Cope on the Plieades Project, an attempt to build and conduct research into SETI, using a 140-meter Galilaen feed radio telescope that would also serve as a large-scale musical instrument. Among his original instruments are a computer- controlled interactive filter bank (1984), “Uforce,” a modified Nintendo game controller (1989), a digital elevation model control surface instrument (1989, with Bill Thibaut), Hub’s 2nd generation computer network/music facilitating hardware (1990), an infrared remote control pulse accumulating device (1992), and a Tensegrity Harp (1994; after R. Buckminster Fuller).

Works

Be Normal for Instrumentalists, Tape, and Actors (1976); Bozo’s face makes a waltz for Instrumentalists, Tape, and Actors (1976); Styx for Percussion Quartet and Electronics (1978); Interlok for 4 Guitarists and Electronics (1979; rev. 1982); Allegory of the Beached Whale for Bass Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone, and Electronics (1982); Food Chain for 4 Macintosh Computers and Sequencers (1985); Whackers for Computer and Selenoid-based Robot (1987); McCall.DEM for Computer, Electronics, and Digital Elevation Models (1989); Human/Nature for Piano (1990); String Quartets in Baroque Forms for String Quartet (1992); A mighty wind blows through my soul for String Orch. (1993); VEX for Computer Network, Electronics, and Disklavier (1994); Whirlpool of Blood for Voice, Long Tube, and Electronics (1994); Machine for String Orch. (1995); Times Remembered for 6 Computer- controlled CD Players and Digital Processors (1995); 5 Tones for Slonimsky for Computer and Disklavier (1996); The heart that wandered for String Quartet (1996); Giest Incidental Music for String Quartet and Percussion (1998); in the unlikely event of a water landing for Cello Quartet and Neural Net Electronics (1999).

—Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire