Mark So

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Mark So (born June 14, 1978 in Syracuse, NY) is an American composer and also performer (mainly as pianist) of experimental music active in Los Angeles, CA. His works, which number over 300, are strongly influenced by New York School aesthetics, Fluxus, and the Wandelweiser composers collective. Often involving text-based procedures, alternate tunings and indeterminacy, his music pursues unforeseen results within restricted fields of musical decision and action. Tending to write in expansive series, major groupings of pieces include the blind documents for field recordings and instruments, the readings series for various scenarios involving the reading of text as a primary structural component, a group of empires involving narrowly-defined situations of potential harmony, numerous landscapes and atmospheres, 3 grams, several pieces built on the spellings of individual names, and more than 80 compositions arising from poems by John Ashbery. His scores are performed frequently in the United States and in Europe.

Major collaborators and contemporaries include G. Douglas Barrett, Madison Brookshire, Johnny Chang, Adam Fong, Mari Garrett, Christa Graf, Orin Hildestad, Travis Just, Lewis Keller, Joseph Kudirka, Catherine Lamb, Andrea Lieberherr, Jonathan Marmor, James Orsher, Adam Overton, Michael Pisaro, Mike Richard, Elyssa Shalla, Taylan Susam, Christine Tavolacci, Luke Thomas Taylor, Tashi Wada, Manfred Werder, Michael Winter, Harris Wulfson, István Zelenka, and the Los Angeles-area venues Cold Storage, Machine Project, Sandpaper Books and il corral.

He has performed works from the experimental tradition - often premieres - including those by Antoine Beuger, G. Douglas Barrett, George Brecht, Earle Brown, John Cage, Johnny Chang, Jacob Feinberg, Morton Feldman, Adam Fong, Jürg Frey, Mari Garrett, Stina Hanson, Carlo Inderhees, Travis Just, Lewis Keller, David Kendall, Christian Kesten, Joseph Kudirka, Catherine Lamb, David Mahler, Radu Malfatti, Elana Mann, Jonathan Marmor, James Orsher, Adam Overton, Michael Pisaro, Mike Richard, Felix Salazar, James Saunders, Yuji Takahashi, Luke Thomas Taylor, James Tenney, Jason Thomas, Manfred Werder, Michael Winter, Christian Wolff, Harris Wulfson, Steven Yi, La Monte Young, István Zelenka and many of his own.