Nolan Gasser

Nolan Gasser
Born	(1964-11-10) November 10, 1964 La Mirada, California
Occupation	Composer, musicologist, artistic director

Nolan Ira Gasser (born November 10, 1964) is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist. He is the chief musicologist for Pandora Media, Inc. and the architect of the Music Genome Project,^[1][2] the proprietary musical analysis system that underlies the popular Internet radio service. His classical compositions have been performed by orchestras, chamber ensembles, and soloists around the world, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Rose Bowl.

Gasser is the Artistic Director of Classical Archives,^[3] a leading online classical musical service. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University, where he has been adjunct professor in Medieval-Renaissance music history. He frequently performs as well as lectures around the United States – on music, and the relationship between music and science.

Biography

Gasser began playing piano at age 4, and was composing by age 8. His professional career began at age 11, when he became the weekend pianist at the newly built La Mirada Mall – for which he credits his eclectic musical identity, being fluent in pop, rock, jazz, Broadway, and classical styles.

Gasser received a Bachelor's degree from California State University, Northridge (1988), where he studied composition with Aurelio de la Vega, and piano with Charles Fierro; this was followed by a two-year sojourn in Paris, where he studied privately with Betsy Jolas and at Fontainebleau with Jolas, Gilbert Amy, and Tristan Murail. While in Paris, he began a fascination with Renaissance music (especially the music of Josquin des Prez), spawning an interest in musicology.

Upon returning to the States, he earned a Masters in composition at New York University (1991), studying with Todd Brief and Menachem Zur; and a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University (2001), with his dissertation, "The Marian Motet Cycles of the Gaffurius Codices: A Musical and Liturgico-Devotional Study".

In March 2000, Gasser was hired by Savage Beast Technologies (today Pandora Media, Inc.), where he helped flesh out the Music Genome Project. He is the Chief Musicologist at Pandora, and is the architect of all five Music Genomes (Pop/Rock, Jazz, Hip-hop/Electronica; World Music; Classical); he also helped design the means of analysis and training by which the company continues to this day, as the hugely successful Pandora Radio service.

In April 2003, Gasser became the Artistic Director of the Classical Archives website, which in May 2009 re-launched as a streaming and download service with classical content from most labels. Gasser designed for the site a proprietary database to properly categorize and display classical recordings, and runs the editorial operation – including conducting interviews with classical artists and composers such as Renée Fleming, Hilary Hahn, Alan Gilbert, Hélène Grimaud, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jeremy Denk, Daniel Hope, David Lang, Eric Whitacre, and John Corigliano.^[4]

Gasser is active as a pianist and bandleader, especially in jazz and popular styles – including with the San Francisco Jazz Quartet;^[5] he occasionally teaches musicology, including as an Adjunct Professor at Stanford; he also gives periodical lectures – such as at the 2010 Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival.^[6] and at a recent joint meeting of the National Endowment for the Arts and the United States Department of Health and Human Services in Washington D.C., regarding arts education. He was a visiting professor at UC Santa Barbara in February 2011. Gasser is in the early stages of a book on the inter-relationship between music and science.

He lives in Petaluma, California, with his wife Lynn (since 1994) and their two children, Camille (born 1995) and Preston (born 2001).

Composition

Gasser's shift in focus to musicology, beginning in 1991, led to an extended disruption in his compositional output, with only a handful of works written before his graduation from Stanford in 2001. Since 2003, however, composition has become a principal focus of his career.

Among his substantial works include American Festivals – a four-movement work with poetry by Robert Trent Jones, Jr.; each movement is dedicated to a distinct and quintessential American holiday: "Oration on July 4th" (2004), "Black Suite Blues" (for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; 2005); "Memorial Day" (2006); and "Thanksgiving" (2007). The work has been performed – in part and whole – numerous times by several orchestras (e.g., Charleston, Memphis, Arkansas, and Oakland East Bay Symphonies), including a complete performance at the 2008 IMG Festival del sole (Napa Valley, CA.).^[7]

Gasser's most ambitious composition project in recent years has been a pair of works written in conjunction with NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (formerly GLAST) – launched June 8, 2008. The first work, the GLAST Prelude, for brass quintet (2007), was recorded by the American Brass Quintet, and presented at a pre-launch party in Cocoa Beach,^[8] the live premiere took place on November 2, 2009 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the work was released on the ABQ's 50th Anniversary CD on Summit Records.

The same Kennedy Center concert also saw the premiere of the second Fermi-related work, the narrated symphony Cosmic Reflection, with narration by Pierre Schwob and physicist Lawrence Krauss that tells the full history of the Universe.^[9] The work was recorded by the Baltimore Symphony under Marin Alsop, and will be subsequently released as a full-feature DVD.

Among other serious works include his World Cello for Cello and Orchestra (2008), which was premiered by cellist Maya Beiser and the Oakland East Bay Symphony under Michael Morgan, along with three "world" soloists: Jiebing Chen, erhu; Aruna Narayan, sarangi; and Bassam Saba, oud.^[10] His 3 Jazz Preludes (2007) were performed at Carnegie Hall by pianist Kimball Gallagher in March 2008. His String Quartet No.2 was recently completed and will be premiered in 2012. His opera The Secret Garden, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, premiered on 1 March 2013.

Discography and media

• GLAST Prelude on YouTube
• GLAST Prelude on State of the Art: The American Brass Quintet at 50 (Summit Records, 2010)
• San Francisco Jazz Quartet, Ode to Swing (Mundana Nova, 2011)
• "Montana Home" (lyrics and sung by Jim Salestrom) on Beneath the Big Sky (Rebecca Records, 2008)
• "Christmas by the Bay" (lyrics by Clark Sterling; Tim Hockenberry, vocals) on Christmas by the Bay (Sterling Performances, 2003)
• "Life is a Beautiful Song" (lyrics and sung by Jim Salestrom) on Safe Home (Rebecca Records, 2001)

References

• Stanford University Library Index (Search Works)

External links

• Official web site
• Cheryl North Interviews Nolan Gasser
• Interview by NASA's Bill Steigerwald
• Pandora Radio & the Music Genome Project: What Musicology & Science Reveal About Our Musical Tastes lecture at the Linda Hall Library, November 2, 2011
• Classical Archives