Theo Bleckmann

 

 

 

THEO BLECKMANN

SINGER AND COMPOSER


Genre -bending, -skipping and -skirting, vocalist/composer Theo Bleckmann has been a steady force in the New York downtown music scene for over a decade. Recognized as both a performer and composer, his work spans concerts, installations, theater, cabaret and performance art. He has sung worldwide on some of the great stages including Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall and the Sydney Opera House. The New Yorker called him a “local cult favorite”, the New York Times “excellent” and according to OUT Magazine Bleckmann is “a singer who's only recently fallen to earth.”  Indeed Bleckmann's style has something otherworldly and ethereal.

In 1989 Bleckmann moved from his native Germany to New York City after meeting legendary jazz vocalist Sheila Jordan at a workshop in Graz, Austria, who remains an influential mentor and colleague to this day. Together they can be heard on Sheila Jordan's Jazzchild (High Note). Since then he has worked with such artists as Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Zorn and the Bang on a Can All-stars and was a guest vocalist with the Albany Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Estonian Radio Choir, Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Mark Morris Dance.

A Winter & Winter recording artist, Bleckmann's whimsical collection of show tunes, Las Vegas Rhapsody, with the chamber orchestra Basel has been described as "the most transcendent vocal album in many a moon", by Francis Davis in the Village Voice. His 2001 release, Origami (Songlines) received four and a half stars (out of five) from Downbeat Magazine, marking it as one of 2001’s best releases, and Downbeat also declared him a "rising star" in their recent Critics’ Poll. His great range, vocally, emotionally and physically (Bleckmann was once a junior ice dancing champion in his native Germany), inspired some of today's great composers, such as Mark Dresser, Moritz Eggert, John Hollenbeck, Phil Kline, Ben Monder, Denman Maroney, Meredith Monk, Ikue Mori, Kirk Nurock, Bob Ostertag, Neil Rollnick, Eric Salzman, Randall Wong and Bang on a Can's David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, to create pieces especially for and with him; prominently, composer and multi media artist, Meredith Monk, whose core ensemble Bleckmann has been a member of since 1994.

Bleckmann particularly enjoys performing in duo. He and percussionist/composer John Hollenbeck forge an ethereal bond born of a long track record of working together including their duo, which is captured on Static Still (GPE Records) and Hollenbeck’s Quartet Lucy (CRI). Bleckmann is also a featured vocalist in Hollenbeck's two Large Ensemble recordings (A Blessing, Omnitone and Joys and Desires, Intuition). A Blessing was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2006. Bleckmann has also collaborated extensively with composer/pianist Kirk Nurock, on Theo & Kirk and Looking Glass River (both Traumton.) His ongoing collaborations with guitarist Ben Monder can be heard on Monder's Excavation and Oceana (Sunnyside) and their two duo releases, No Boat and their most recent At Night (both Songlines).

Bleckmann's multidisciplinary works include a commission by the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris to compose and create a music performance piece from Kenneth Goldsmith's text “Fidget”, which Bleckmann scored for voice, piano, percussion, bass, video and three sewing machines. In real time, four seamstresses sewed a paper suit out of the hundreds of sheets of paper that were Bleckmann's libretto.

In collaboration with performance artist Lynn Book, he created “Mercuria” (produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), incorporating visual and vocal elements of dream and subconscious into an evening-length performance piece. Playing the gangster Dutch Schultz, Bleckmann co-created “The True Last Words of Dutch Schultz,” a new music opera in collaboration with director Valeria Vasilevski and composer Eric Salzman. In 2005, Bleckmann was commissioned to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the German encyclopedia Brockhaus at the International book fair in Frankfurt, which he orchestrated for 31 voices in a surround-sound performance.

As a sound improviser, he has performed, created and developed movie, television and theater scores, among them space Alien language for “Men in Black” by Steven Spielberg, “Star Trek: Envoy” (Meredith Monk), "Kundun" (Philip Glass). Theo Bleckmann sang in John Moran's “Book of the Dead” at the Public Theater in NY, performed a lead in Band on a Can's Obie Award-winning opera “Carbon Copy Building,” and frequently appears as a soloist with the Bang on a Can All-stars.

In collaboration with director Laurie McCants and set designer Elaine F. Williams, he wrote the music and performed "The Alexandria Carry On", which has been traveling the US and was performed at the new library in Alexandria, Egypt.

Theo Bleckmann's work has been recognized with several awards including a Bessie Award, Presser Award for Outstanding Talent and the ASCAP/Gershwin Award for his composition “Chorale #1 for Eight Voices” as well as grants from Arts International, the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, New York Foundation for the Arts, Meet The Composer and the Council on Humanities, PA. He was also voted "Cultural Elite" by New York Magazine in 2005 and 2006.

 Bleckmann is on the faculty at New York's Manhattan School of Music where he is teaching in the jazz Vocal Masters program. He has also been an adjunct at New York University, The New School and Queens College. He teaches voice privately and in workshops and master classes worldwide.

His latest recording projects include the debut self-titled CD from Moss, which is comprised of some of New York's most diverse and interesting singers (Bleckmann, Peter Eldridge, Kate McGarry, Lauren Kinhan and Luciana Souza,) just released on Sunnyside Records.

His new CD for Winter & Winter, Berlin - German Songs of Love and War, Peace and Exile, has just been released. Two new recordings are scheduled on Winter & Winter for 2008: a collection of Charles Ives songs with L.A. based jazz/rock group Kneebody is scheduled for release in the fall of 2008, and Refuge Trio's first recording (w/John Hollenbeck and Gary Vesace.)

Visit Theo at his website

Read what the critics have said about Theo


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