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About Kurt Riemann
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Musician, composer, experimental electronic musician, producer, visual artist. Studied electronic music and computer composition at Stanford University. Has been a producer, engineer and sound designer at Surreal Studios for four decades.
Albums
● “Nightworks” - Hailed by Wendy Carlos as one of the best electronic music albums ever created. Released worldwide on Klaus Schultze’s IC label
● “Gaia” - Original synthesizer interpretations of planet Earth as an organism
● “Alaska” - Album of original all-electronic compositions
● “Echoes of Alaska” - Album of electronic / concrète music with natural sounds
Live performances
● Four live performances of original compositions over four years with the Anchorage Symphony through the invitation of Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams.
● “Arctic Light” - Multimedia performance of Arctic Light with recorded media, with ASO principal violinist Kathryn Hoffer performing live to synchronized video.
● “Sounding” - Symphonic performance with Kurt Riemann playing the experimental musical instrument the Waterphone, also featuring Kathryn Hoffer on violin performing to synthesized cetacean sounds and music.
● “In The Dream I’m Waiting For the Rain to Stop” - Circuit bent “Incantor”, synthesizer, sampler, voice shifter. Two cellos, French Horn, percussion (waterphone, rain stick, and springbox)
● “Moog Improvisation” - Performed in person for synthesizer pioneer and inventor Dr. Robert Moog at the University of Alaska on Moog synthesizer and Theremin.
● “And Then It Began” - Computer generated performance at the Visual Arts Center
Collaboration
● Worked with Anchorage Symphony Director Randall Craig Fleischer realizing three full electronic orchestral scores using sampled symphonic instrumentation.
● “Love the Earth” - his Alaskan time-lapse footage was presented by Grammy award winning British artist Imogen Heap in her live Royal Albert Hall performance.
● “Taksim” - an long-form collaborative in-studio improvisation with Anchorage Symphony percussionist Corliss Kimmel
● “Frozen Charlotte” Electronic improvisation with his late mentor Paul Alexander.
● In 2016 Riemann produced the music recordings for two separate composers (Paul Maas and Paul Walde) for the Polar Lab exhibit at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center
Notable Compositions
● “Will Sambox Dream?” - An elegy dedicated to and written on the mainframe computer (SAMBOX) at Stanford University using Artificial Intelligence Language (SAIL), in the weeks before the pioneering music computer was decommissioned forever.
● Composed daily scores for Alaska’s live Iditarod coverage for five consecutive years
Recent Electronic Works completed / in progress
● “Being in Seward” - Synthesizer, sampler, voice effects
● “Dark Matters” - Multimedia composition for synthesizer, sampler, voice and effects
● “Experimental Music Series” An ongoing series of compositions of experimental music and video . Compositions include Perplexing Arrivals, Aurora, What Remains, Changing Divinations, Palindrome, Aurora, Sonance, Relic, Opus 2 Dance, Auroral Storm, Pagoda, Collimation, Artifacts
Music and video
● Recently worked with Grammy-winning and internationally renowned Irish pipe player Davy Spillane on an original international release “Goodbye” with his wife, MJ Riemann. He also wrote and produced an original music video for the project.
● Commissioned to create a short film for the Anchorage Symphony’s 2016 “ARTic Convergence: Film” performed to live symphonic music.
● Sound and video design for the Alaskan performances of “Spirit” by Peter Buffett
● Original synchronized video for Maestro Randy Fleischers’ multimedia Symphony “Echoes”
● Riemann’s many sound and video works have premiered at Royal Albert Hall, The Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Wendy Williamson Auditorium, Visual Arts Center and various Alaskan art galleries.
Professional Awards
● Riemann’s music, production and sound design work have won Emmy, PRSA Golden Anvil, Summit, Pollie, Cine Golden Eagle, NAMMY and Telly awards
Professional music production
● Riemann has independently produced and engineered over 700 albums for other artists and scored dozens of documentaries.