Erik Lindgren

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This article is about the composer and keyboards player. For the professional poker player, see Erick Lindgren.

Erik Lindgren is American composer and keyboards player. He runs Arf Arf Records, and has led (or been a member of) several ensembles: The Moving Parts, The Space Negros, and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.

Lindgren attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, and received his BA in Music from Tufts University in 1976 where he worked with T. J. Anderson. In 1974–75 he spent his junior year abroad in London studying composition at the Guildhall School of Music with Alfred Nieman and piano with Birgette Wild. Lindgren received an MA in music composition and piano performance from the University of Iowa in 1977 where he studied with Donald Jenni, Richard Hervig and Peter Lewis.

As a contemporary classical composer, Lindgren has a catalog of over five dozen works, ranging from solo piano pieces to chamber music to orchestral works. He also owns Foot Foot Music BMI which publishes all of his original compositions. In 1978, Lindgren established Sounds Interesting Productions, a commercial recording studio and music production company based in Cambridge, MA. In 1998, he relocated his facility to Middleborough, MA. National and regional credits include original scores for ABC, NBC CBS and PBS, Eastpak, Boston Globe, Basketball Hall Of Fame, Jordan Marsh, Polaroid, Prentice Hall and the Christmas Tree Shops. Lindgren also markets The Well-Tempered Music Library that consists of seven CDs of stock commercial music that he composed and produced.

Lindgren was a founding member of the new music ensemble Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic that Billboard Magazine described as “a mesmerizing venture into the space age jungle.” The quartet has toured extensively throughout the United States and Canada and held residencies at Dartmouth College, Emory University, Duke, UNCA and the Massachusetts College of Art. Birdsongs’ has recorded for the Rykodisc, Cuneiform and Ace of Hearts labels and is currently at work on their seventh CD. Recently the group collaborated with Duplex Planet editor/National Public Radio correspondent David Greenberger on 1001 Real Apes.

For over twenty years, Lindgren has run the Arf! Arf! record label which has released five-dozen archival CDs documenting ’60s Garage/Psychedelic Rock and “Incredibly Strange Music.” Arf! Arf! issued four CD retrospectives by his ’80s experimental studio group The Space Negros. Lindgren has also produced over one hundred records for such diverse artists as Willie Loco Alexander, The Turbines, The Cynics, Magic Mose & his Royal Rockers, featuring 'Blind Sam,' Ed “Moose” Savage And His Litany Of Complaints, and harmonica virtuoso Richard Hunter.