Arnold Dreyblatt (b. New York City, 1953) is a composer, performer and visual artist. He studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier and has been based in Berlin, Germany since 1984. Among the second generation of New York minimal composers, Dreyblatt developed a unique approach to composition and music performance. As he began his music in the late 1970's in New York, he invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning and has formed and led numerous ensembles under the title "The Orchestra of Excited Strings."
Dreyblatt has been composing music for his own and other ensembles for over thirty- five years. Often characterized as the most rock-oriented of American minimalists, he has cultivated a strong underground fan base for his transcendental and ecstatic music with his Orchestra of Excited Strings. The New York native studied film and video at SUNY Buffalo with Woody and Steina Vasulka. In the mid-70s, he studied composition with Pauline Oliveros and LaMonte Young, then with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University. By that time, Dreyblatt had already been directing his own music ensemble. In 1984, he moved to Europe where, in addition to composing, he began activities in erformance and the visual arts. He has received numerous grants, stipends and commissions including the Philip Morris Art Prize, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art and from the Irish Arts Council. Since 2022, Dreyblatt is vice-director of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
His music has been performed by the Bang On A Can All-Stars in New York, Jim O'Rourke, The Great Learning Orchestra in Stockholm, Pellegrini String Quartet, and the Crash Ensemble Dublin. He has recorded for such labels as Tzaddik, Hat Hut, Table of the Elements, Cantaloupe, Important, Choose and Black Truffle. His most recent LP on Drag City: "Resolve" by the latest Orchestra of Excited Strings in Berlin involves musicians Oren Ambarchi, Joachim Schütz and Konrad Sprenger.
Dreyblatt has been guest composer at "The Music Gallery," Toronto; MIT Boston, Serralves Foundation, Porto; Austin New Music Ensemble, and the Great Learning Orchestra, Stockholm and many others. He has performed with and without his ensemble at the Whitney Museum, New York; the Maerz Music Festival, Berlin; the Angelika Festival, Bologna; The Lab in San Francisco , Berghain Berlin and countless other festivals and concert venues in Europe and in North America.
Konrad Sprenger the pseudonym of Berlin-based composer, artist, music producer and instrument builder Joerg Hiller. In his own work and in numerous collaborative projects, Hiller works in the intersection of performance, installation, composition and research. Hiller’s work is characterized by gradually unfolding patterning of precisely controlled harmonic and rhythmic structures, and makes use of both synthetic sounds and acoustic instruments of his own creation. Recent work includes multi-channel live performances centered around a computer-controlled electric guitar continuously tuned and strummed by electronically driven mechanics. Since 2017, Hiller and his collaborator Philip Sollmann have been developing and presenting Modular Organ System, a large-scale sound installation integrating both conventional organ pipes and extended pipes and horns of their own design. Other long-standing collaborations include work with Arnold Dreyblatt, Ellen Fullman, Oren Ambarchi, Rom, Ei, Ethnostress and the artist collective Honey-Suckle Company. As a producer and engineer, Hiller has also worked on solo records for Ambarchi, Dreyblatt, Fullman. Hiller’s work has been presented in exhibitions and performances internationally, and released on renowned record labels such as PAN, A-Ton and Schoolmap.
Patrick Holmes hails from Austin, TX and has called New York City his home for over 20 years. Holmes honed his clarinet techniques through frequent collaborative improvisation within NY’s downtown scene, and via studies with Sabir Mateen, Connie Crothers, Andriy Milavsky, among others. He has played with Jon Gibson, Ryan Sawyer, Daniel Carter, Jaimie Branch, Fay Victor, Bob Bert, James Brandon Lewis, Che Chen, the Utter Nots, and many others.
Kyle Motl is a bassist, composer, and improviser whose playing is noted for both “iridescent delicacy as well as abrasive force” (The Wire). His music “promise[s] to change us by revealing things we could never have imagined” (Free Jazz Collective). Kyle’s work inhabits territories composed and improvised, including projects with Treesearch, Patrick Shiroishi, Clucas/Motl/Hubbard, a trio with Anthony Davis and Kjell Nordeson, and work with contemporary music ensembles including the International Contemporary Ensemble and Ghost Ensemble.
