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E
Z R A S I M S
BIO
Ezra Sims is known mainly as a composer of microtonal music. He made his professional debut (with his earlier twelve-note music) on a
Composers Forum program, in New York, in 1959.
In 1960, he found himself compelled by his ear to begin writing
microtonal music, which he has done almost exclusively since then — aside from
several years when he made tape music
for dancers, musicians at the time being
generally even more afraid of microtones than they are now.
His music has been performed from
Tokyo to Salzburg.
He has received various awards — Guggenheim Fellowship, Koussevitzky
commission, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, etc. He has lectured on his music in the US and
abroad, most notably at the Hambürger Musikgespräch, 1994; the second Naturton
Symposium in Heidelberg, 1992; and the 3rd and 4th
Symposium, Mikrotöne und Ekmelische Musik, at the Hochschüle für Musik und
Darstellende Kunst Mozarteum, Salzburg, in 1989 & 1991. In 1992-93, he was guest lecturer in the
Richter Herf Institut für Musikalische Grundlagenforschung in the Mozarteum.
He has published articles on his technique in Computer Music Journal, Mikrotöne III,
Mikrotöne IV, Perspectives of New Music, and Ex Tempore.
With Ted Mook, he designed a font,
for use with computer printing programs, for his set of accidentals sufficient
for 72-note music that has been widely adopted in the field (http://www.mindeartheart.org/MWFS.html).
He was co-founder -- with Rodney Lister and
Scott Wheeler -- of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, of which he was President
from 1977-1981, and on its Board of Directors
from that time to 2003.
His music is published by Frog Peak
Music (www.frogpeak.org) and Diapason
Press (Corpus Microtonale) and is available from
New World Records on CRI LP 186 and CD 578, 643, and 784.