| Peter Gena, composer, holds a Ph.D. in music composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he studied with Morton Feldman, Lejaren Hiller, and William Kothe. His compositions of various media, including instrumental, electronic and computer-generated, have been presented extensively in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Performances/installations include works presented at Le Cube and the Palais de Tolyo, Paris; Computing Music IV (Cologne); The Pandemic Night/La Notte Bianca (Milan); Festival d'Automne (2004), Paris; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; the Berkeley Art Musuem (2003); Mini to the Max (2002), at the Brisbane Powerhouse, Australia; the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain, (2002); Arte al Centro 2001, at Cittadellarte/Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella; The National Gallery of China, Beijing (2001); Ars Electronica 1999, Linz; Aspekte Salzburg 1997; The International Computer Music Conference, Hong Kong; L.A.C.E., Los Angeles; San Juan University and the Poncé Museum of Art, Puerto Rico; Akademie der Kunst, Berlin; Herbst Theater, San Francisco; the University of St. Tomas, Manilla, and the Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music, Quezon City, The Philippines; Museu da Imagem e do Som, in São Paulo, Brazil; the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany; Roulette, the Merkin Concert Hall, The Art Students League, and at Lincoln Center in New York; the Listening Room, 1991 São Paulo Bienal; New Music America 1981, 1982 & 1990. Similarly, as a pianist he has publicly performed many of his own works as well as those of others. |  |
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Gena’s publications include, Freedom in Experimental Music: the New York Revolution (TriQuarterly 52); A John Cage Reader, in celebration of the composer’s 70th Birthday (C.F. Peters Inc., NYC, 1983 [hardcover]); John Cage and the New York School: A Hyperlecture/Conversation (Warsaw Contemporary Art Museum, 1994) and a contribution to The Waltz Project (published by C.F. Peters, and recorded on Nonesuch Records), choreographed by Peter Martins and in the repertory of the New York City Ballet. His essay Cage and Rauschenberg: Purposeful Purposelessness Meets Found Order accompanied the exhibitions, Robert Rauschenberg: The Early 1950s,and John Cage: Scores from the Early 1950s, shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. A paper, A Physiological Approach to DNA Music, was presented and published at CADE 2001, in Glasgow; and at the Art and Science Global Symposium, Tsinghua University, Beijing. An article, Apropos Sonification: A Broad View of Data as Music and Sound, appears in AI & Society (Vol. 27/2, 2012). Two scores of his political musical portraits are published by Editions V (Dortmund, Germany), and his music is recorded on Nonesuch, Lovely Music, Ltd., and Edition bianchi-neri. Gena has produced, directed, and performed in many new musical and multi-media events, including NEMO '96, New Music America '82 in Chicago, and the 1978 International Computer Music Conference at Northwestern University. He was the Events Program Director for the 1997 International Symposium of Electronic Arts (Chicago), and was the Artistic Director of the New European Music Overseas Festival (1995-96). He also served as a contributing editor to Formations, a journal of new fiction and arts criticism, and was the recipient of grants and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, Arts Midwest, the Illinois Arts Council, the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, CSU at Fresno, and SUNY at Buffalo. Gena is decorated by the French government at the rank of Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Gena is Professor Emeritus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where, as professor from 1983 to 2017, he taught electronic and computer music, music and art history, computer programming, and interdisciplinary courses. From 1976 to 1983, he was an Assistant Professor in Theory-Composition at the School of Music of Northwestern University, where he co-directed the Computer Music Studio. From 1974 to 1976, he was a Lecturer in Music and Director of the Electronic Music Studio at the California State University in Fresno. While still a graduate student at SUNY, Buffalo, he taught and directed the Electronic Music Studio at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario (1971-74). During his fifty years in academia he has given residencies and lectures at numerous universities, among them: Indiana University (Bloomington), CSU, Long Beach (California), University of Redlands (California), University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Northwestern University, (Guest Professor, Spring, 1992 and 1996), Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Music (Darmstadt), Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), Estúdio da Glória, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), SUNY at Buffalo, University of San Juan (Puerto Rico), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico, LaSalle College of Art (Singapore), Columbia University (New York), Cleveland Institute of Art, SCAN (at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art, Villa Arson, Nice), Carnegie Mellon University, the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art, Aix-en-Provence, the Villa Serbelloni: Rockefeller Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, The Art Students League of New York, the École Nationale Supérieure d'Art Bourges, and the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Paris. |
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