Jason Eckardt
Jason Eckardt (born 1971 in Princeton, New Jersey) began as a guitarist in heavy metal and jazz before turning to composition after encountering the music of Webern. He studied at Berklee, then at Columbia University with Jonathan Kramer (MA 1994, DMA 1998), and attended masterclasses with Milton Babbitt, Brian Ferneyhough and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His music is atonal, with dense polyphony and intricate rhythm. His works include After Serra (2000), Tongues (2001) and the Undersong cycle (2002-2008).
Passage
Jason Eckardt’s composition Passage is a profound exploration of the unsettling history surrounding the CIA’s interest in sensory deprivation and its impact on human psychology. Divided into three movements – Subject, Ascension, and Testify – Eckardt delves into the dark legacy of interrogation techniques, shedding light on the use of sound and light as weapons in various global conflicts. In a separate work, pulse-echo, Eckardt transforms the piano into a resonant body, drawing inspiration from…
Undersong
Jason Eckardt's Undersong cycle, built around Laura Mullen's text, with A way [tracing], 16, Aperture and The Distance (This), played by Fred Sherry, Claire Chase, Tony Arnold and the International Contemporary Ensemble under Steven Schick.
Out of Chaos
The first complete CD of music by New York composer Jason Eckardt: four first recordings, After Serra, Tangled Loops, A Glimpse Retraced and Polarities, played by Ensemble 21, saxophonist Taimur Sullivan and pianist Marilyn Nonken.