User:Joseph Byrd

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Education

Mus.B. University of Arizona (magna cum laude) (1959) M.A. Stanford University (teaching assistant) (1960) post-graduate study: Morton Feldman (composition), John Cage (philosophy; composition, Noah Greenberg, New York Pro Musica (early music),Lehman Engel (orchestration, music history, music production) (Ph.D.) UCLA, not completed (teaching assistant) (1963-66); studied with Carlos Chavez (composition), Charles Seeger (ethno-musicology, American music history), Lawrence Petran (systematic musicology), Gayathri Rajapur (music of South India)

Professional Experience

During my three years in New York I was private secretary to Virgil Thomson, 1960-62. I was staff arranger and producer for Capitol Records 1962-63, with primary responsibility for producing the Time-Life Music of the Civil War, and Time-Life Christmas albums.

I was involved in the seminal music, concept art, and performance art avant-garde movements in San Francisco-Berkeley/Stanford in the late 1950s, New York City in the early 1960s (the FLUXUS Group), and Los Angeles in the mid 1960s. My first New York concert was at Yoko Ono’s loft in Greenwich Village in 1960. I formed the New Music Workshop at UCLA in 1963, and produced the first West Coast festival of avant-garde arts there in 1966. I also wrote for the LA Free Press and other publications, and lectured at the Pasadena Art Museum and elsewhere, during that period. I wrote the liner notes for John Cage’s recording of “Variations IV” on Everest. [These are reprinted in John Cage: A Critical Survey, University of Michigan, 1995.]

In 1966 I formed an electronic-sound/performance-art/rock ensemble, The United States of America, which recorded two albums on Columbia Records in 1967 and 68, for which I wrote or co-wrote most of the songs. These albums did not sell well at the time but have both been re-released several times, and are now the subject of music scholarship as formative sources for the “progressive rock” movement of the early 70s. Then and subsequently I designed “user specs” for analog synthesizer manufacturers Tom Oberheim and Donald Bucha, pioneers in the field. I was the first person to use synthesizers in combination with live instruments.

From the late 1960s to the late 1980s I worked as a composer/arranger, electronic synthesist, and music director for film, radio and television programs, record companies and ad agencies.

I have recorded, arranged, and/or produced music for 18 albums/CDs (not including re-releases).

Scholarship and Teaching

As a scholar of music in American cultural history, I was a founding member of both the Oscar Sonneck Society (now the periodical American Music) and IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music). I was principal consultant for CBS Television’s 1976 Bicentennial American music special, produced by Goddard Lieberson. I have written for the quarterlies American Music and Popular Music and Society. My recorded albums of reconstructed American popular music include Sentimental Songs of the Mid-19th Century (Takoma, 1975), and the six-sided Popular Music in Jacksonian America (Musical Heritage, 1982), which AMQ called, “a major contribution to American music studies....a standard and a model for all who would revive music from this era.”

In the mid 1960s I taught at the Pasadena Art Museum and UC Irvine Extension (“History of the Avant-Garde 1895-1965”), and in the early 70s at CSU Fullerton, as Lecturer in Music (“Counterpoint,” “Music for Classroom Teachers,” “Origins of American Popular Music”). I presently am Adjunct Professor of Music at College of the Redwoods ("American Popular Music," "Music in History," "Songwriting," and "Music Theory."