The New York-based duo of Loren Dempster (cello) and Dan Joseph (hammer dulcimer) perform collaborative compositions and improvisations that incorporate a mix of world music traditions, contemporary avant-garde techniques, and pulse minimalism. Active on the east coast since 2002, their music also contains a strong west coast sensibility, drawing as it does on their shared history in California where they originally met. They have performed to enthusiastic audiences at Merkin Concert Hall, Deep Listening Space, Galapagos, Issue Project Room and others.
Based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, cellist Loren Kiyoshi Dempster can be found playing music with New York Minaturist Ensemble, Bushwick String Quartet, Jessica Pavone Ensemble, Matt Bauder Ensemble, XYZ composer collective, Taylor Ho Bynum Quintet, and the Dan Joseph Ensemble. Ever interested in the relationship between movement and sound, he has created or performed music for many choreographers including Chris Ferris, Catherine Kerr, Lenora Lee, Elke Rindfleisch, Ted Thomas, and Jeremy Wade. Dempster also enjoys performing as a touring musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company starting with the premieres of Biped, with music by Gavin Byrars and Interscape, which uses John Cage’s solo cello work One8. A native of Seattle, has Cello performance degrees from the University of Washington, where he studied cello with Raymond Davis (Autumn 96, BA/BM) and from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1999 where he studied with Bonnie Hampton.
Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer based in New York City. He began his career at 16 as a drummer in the explosive punk scene of his native Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music underground producing works for independent labels in the U.S. and abroad. He moved to California in 1991 where he resided for 10 years, earning composition degrees from CalArts and Mills College. As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, he works simultaneously in a variety of mediums and contexts, including traditional instrumental composition, free improvisation, sound art and popular electronica. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music and he is an active performer with his own ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations with cellist Loren Dempster, saxophonist John Ingle and others, and as an occasional soloist. A new CD of his chamber music compositions entitled Archaea has just been released by Mutable Music.
Check out: http://www.danjoseph.org.
