Mark Applebaum

Mark Applebaum (b. 1967, Chicago) received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, electro-acoustic, and electronic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia with notable performances at the Darmstadt summer sessions, ICMC in Beijing, Italy’s Festival Spaziomusica, the Young Nordic Music Festival in Sweden, Sonic Circuits in Hong Kong, Amsterdam’s Great Virtuoso Slugfest, SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, the Essl Museum in Vienna, the Kennedy Center, and at Electronic Music Midwest where served as the 2002 visiting artist.

He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Vienna Modern Festival, Zeitgeist, MANUFACTURE (Tokyo), the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Jerome Foundation, and the American Composers Forum, among others. In 1997 Applebaum received the American Music Center’s Stephen Albert Award and an artist residency fellowship at the Villa Montalvo artist colony in Northern California.

Since 1990 Applebaum has built electro-acoustic instruments out of junk, hardware, and found objects for use as both compositional and improvisational tools. Mousetrap Music, a CD of sound-sculpture improvisations can be heard on the Innova label. Also on Innova is The Janus ReMixes: Exercises in Auto-Plundering, a CD of eleven electronic works whose source material corresponds exclusively to recordings of the eleven acoustic compositions that constitute his Janus Cycle (1992-1996). Helen Beldsoe's recording of his flute solo Entre Funérailles IV may be heard on the Capstone label.

Applebaum is also active as a jazz pianist and has concertized from Sumatra to the Czech Republic. At present he performs with his father, Robert Applebaum of Chicago, in the Applebaum Jazz Piano Duo. Their first recording, The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree, is available on Innova. He is assistant professor of composition and theory at Stanford University. Prior to his current appointment, he taught at UCSD, Mississippi State University, and Carleton College.

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