Michael Hearst
Encyclopedia
Michael Marcus Hearst is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer. His musical instruments include claviola
, theremin
, guitar, piano, drums and bass. He earned a degree in music composition from Virginia Commonwealth University
in 1995, where he studied under Dika Newlin
.
Hearst is a founding member of the eclectic musical group One Ring Zero
, which started in Richmond, VA in 1997 and relocated to Brooklyn, NY in 2001. The group has released multiple albums since their formation. The albums are often programmatic and/or collaborative, such as their acclaimed album As Smart As We Are, which consists of lyrics contributed by various authors including Paul Auster
, Margaret Atwood
, Jonathan Lethem
, A.M. Homes, Neil Gaiman
, Rick Moody
and Dave Eggers
. Their album Planets, and is a collection of new compositions to represent the solar system and beyond. One Ring Zero's current book/cd, The Recipe Project, is a collection recipes set to music and sung word for word. Recipes were contributed by Mario Batali
, Chris Cosentino
, Andrea Reusing, David Chang
, John Besh
, Mark Kurlansky
, Michael Symon
, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz
among others.
As a solo artist, Hearst's work included the album Songs For Ice Cream Trucks, the audio website Songs For Newsworthy News, and the soundtrack for the films The Good Mother
and The House of Suh.
Hearst also established Urban Geek Studios and Urban Geek Records, where he has produced, recorded, and worked on post production for a number of bands and projects including Guided by Voices
, Kansas (band)
, The Holy Modal Rounders, and Robert Creeley
.
Hearst has performed and given lectures and workshops at universities, museums, and cultural centers around the world. He has also appeared on such shows at NPR's Fresh Air
, A+E's Breakfast With The Arts, and NBC's The Today Show.
In 2008, Hearst toured with The Magnetic Fields
as their support act, reading flash-non-fiction stories, and performing selections from Songs For Newsworthy News.
In April, 2009, Hearst performed Terry Riley
's Concert in C alongside the Kronos Quartet
, Philip Glass
, Dave Douglas (trumpeter)
, Osvaldo Golijov
, Morton Subotnick
, and many others at Carnegie Hall
in New York City.
In October, 2011, Hearst performed with Tanya Donelly
at concerts in New York City and Boston.
Hearst's forthcoming solo album Songs For Unusual Creatures is a collection of songs inspired by some of the lesser-known animals to roam the planet. For this project, he has composed works for Kronos Quartet
, The Microscopic Septet
, Margaret Leng Tan
, and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots
.
As a writer, Hearst's stories have appeared in literary journals such as McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Post Road, Parenthetical Note, The Lifted Brow
, and The Muse Apprentice Guild.
Claviola
The Claviola is a musical instrument that was designed in the 1960s by Hohner technician and designer Ernst Zacharias . The instrument was produced for a few months in the 1990s before being discontinued....
, theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
, guitar, piano, drums and bass. He earned a degree in music composition from Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University is a public university located in Richmond, Virginia. It comprises two campuses in the Downtown Richmond area, the product of a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968...
in 1995, where he studied under Dika Newlin
Dika Newlin
Dika Newlin was a pianist, professor, musicologist, composer and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg, a Schoenberg scholar and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond from...
.
Hearst is a founding member of the eclectic musical group One Ring Zero
One Ring Zero
One Ring Zero is a modern music group led by Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst that melds many genres and sounds to create a unique type of music.-Instruments:...
, which started in Richmond, VA in 1997 and relocated to Brooklyn, NY in 2001. The group has released multiple albums since their formation. The albums are often programmatic and/or collaborative, such as their acclaimed album As Smart As We Are, which consists of lyrics contributed by various authors including Paul Auster
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
, Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
, Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...
, A.M. Homes, Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
, Rick Moody
Rick Moody
Rick Moody is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into a feature film of...
and Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...
. Their album Planets, and is a collection of new compositions to represent the solar system and beyond. One Ring Zero's current book/cd, The Recipe Project, is a collection recipes set to music and sung word for word. Recipes were contributed by Mario Batali
Mario Batali
Mario Batali is an American chef, writer, restaurateur and media personality. In addition to his classical culinary training, he is an expert on the history and culture of Italian cuisine, including regional and local variations. Batali co-owns restaurants in New York City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles,...
, Chris Cosentino
Chris Cosentino
Chris Cosentino is an American chef noted for his specialty, offal dishes, now considered haute cuisine by many, and his eco-consciousness. He is executive chef at Incanto in San Francisco. He was a competitor on The Next Iron Chef and has appeared on Iron Chef America. As of September 2009, he...
, Andrea Reusing, David Chang
David Chang
David Chang is a noted Korean-American chef. He is chef/owner of the Momofuku restaurant group, which includes Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Má Pêche, Milk Bar and Momofuku Ko in New York City, the latter for which he was awarded two Michelin stars in 2009, and Momofuku Seiōbo in...
, John Besh
John Besh
John Besh is the owner and executive chef at restaurant August in New Orleans, Louisiana , and owns six other restaurants: La Provence, The American Sector, Lüke , Besh Steak , and Domenica in the Roosevelt Hotel...
, Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky is an American journalist and writer of general interest non-fiction. He is especially known for titles on eclectic topics, such as cod or salt....
, Michael Symon
Michael Symon
Michael D. Symon is a James Beard Foundation Award-winning American chef, restaurateur, television personality, and author. He is seen regularly on Food Network on shows such as Iron Chef America, Food Feuds, and The Best Thing I Ever Ate, as well as Cook Like an Iron Chef on the Cooking Channel...
, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Isa Chandra Moskowitz is an American author, magazine columnist, and former host of community access cooking show Post Punk Kitchen. She has authored several best-selling cookbooks, including Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Veganomicon, Vegan Brunch,Vegan Cookies Invade...
among others.
As a solo artist, Hearst's work included the album Songs For Ice Cream Trucks, the audio website Songs For Newsworthy News, and the soundtrack for the films The Good Mother
The Good Mother
The Good Mother is a direct-to-video film starring Angie Harmon, Jordan Hinson, Joel Gretsch and Bobby Coleman. Although it shares no characters with The Glass House, it was marketed as a thematic sequel.-Plot:At the start of the movie, they show a search for David, Eve and Raymond's previous...
and The House of Suh.
Hearst also established Urban Geek Studios and Urban Geek Records, where he has produced, recorded, and worked on post production for a number of bands and projects including Guided by Voices
Guided by Voices
Guided by Voices is an American indie rock band originating from Dayton, Ohio. Beginning with the band's formation in 1983, it made frequent personnel changes but always maintained the presence of principal songwriter Robert Pollard...
, Kansas (band)
Kansas (band)
Kansas is an American rock band that became popular in the 1970s initially on Album-Oriented Rock charts, and later with hit singles such as "Carry On Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind"...
, The Holy Modal Rounders, and Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
.
Hearst has performed and given lectures and workshops at universities, museums, and cultural centers around the world. He has also appeared on such shows at NPR's Fresh Air
Fresh Air
Fresh Air is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States. The show is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its longtime host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 450 stations and claimed 4.5 million listeners. The show...
, A+E's Breakfast With The Arts, and NBC's The Today Show.
In 2008, Hearst toured with The Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields is the principal creative outlet of singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt...
as their support act, reading flash-non-fiction stories, and performing selections from Songs For Newsworthy News.
In April, 2009, Hearst performed Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
's Concert in C alongside the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, Dave Douglas (trumpeter)
Dave Douglas (trumpeter)
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter and composer whose music derives from many non-jazz musical styles, including classical music, folk music from European countries and Klezmer. He has been a member of the experimental big band Orange Then Blue...
, Osvaldo Golijov
Osvaldo Golijov
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is a Grammy award–winning composer of classical music.-Biography:Osvaldo Golijov was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of...
, Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...
, and many others at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in New York City.
In October, 2011, Hearst performed with Tanya Donelly
Tanya Donelly
Tanya Donelly is an American Grammy-nominated singer songwriter and guitarist based in New England who co-founded Throwing Muses with her stepsister Kristin Hersh. She then went on to work in The Breeders and Belly in the 1990s...
at concerts in New York City and Boston.
Hearst's forthcoming solo album Songs For Unusual Creatures is a collection of songs inspired by some of the lesser-known animals to roam the planet. For this project, he has composed works for Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, The Microscopic Septet
The Microscopic Septet
The Microscopic Septet is a jazz septet, founded in 1980 by saxophonist Phillip Johnston. They played frequently in New York City, toured, and recorded until they disbanded in 1992. In late 2006, when their four albums were re-released along with previously unreleased material as two double CDs,...
, Margaret Leng Tan
Margaret Leng Tan
Margaret Leng Tan is a classical music artist known for her work as a professional toy pianist, performing in major cities around the world on her 51 cm-high toy pianos...
, and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots
League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots
The League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, or LEMUR, is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR's philosophy is to build robotic instruments that play themselves...
.
As a writer, Hearst's stories have appeared in literary journals such as McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Post Road, Parenthetical Note, The Lifted Brow
The Lifted Brow
The Lifted Brow is a bimonthly Australian magazine that originated in Brisbane and is now produced from Melbourne..Primarily a literary journal, it also publishes art, comics, and music; it has been considered "uncategorisable"...
, and The Muse Apprentice Guild.
Albums
- Schwa “Footleg Room” (1991) (Joe Lee Records)
- Schwa “Phoney Karate” (1992) (Joe Lee Records)
- Fashion Central “Underwood” (1994) (Brilliant Records)
- Maud Gonne “Buff Silky” (1996) (Urban Geek Records)
- Anon “Anon” (1998) (Urban Geek Records)
- One Ring Zero “Tranz Party” (1999) (Planetary Records)
- One Ring Zero “Alice” (2001) (Urban Geek Records)
- One Ring Zero “Interludes and Out-takes from The Pumpkin Pie Show” (2001) (Urban Geek Records)
- One Ring Zero “Memorandum” (2002) (Urban Geek Records)
- One Ring Zero “As Smart As We Are” (2004) (Soft Skull Press)
- One Ring Zero and Rick Moody (2004) (Isota Records)
- One Ring Zero “New York Spleen” (2005) (Naïve Records-France)
- Sophie Auster (2005) (Actes Sud / Naïve Records)
- One Ring Zero “As Smart As We Are” (2006) (Barbes Records)
- One Ring Zero “Wake Them Up” (2006) (Barbes Records)
- One Ring Zero “Wake Them Up” (2007) (Moor Works-Japan)
- Michael Hearst “Songs For Ice Cream Trucks” (2007) (Urban Geek Records)
- Beat Circus "Dreamland" (2008) (Cuneiform Records)
- One Ring Zero “Live At Barbes” (2008) (Barbes Records)
- One Ring Zero “Ten Years Of Extra Stuff” (2009) (Urban Geek Records)
- One Ring Zero “Planets” (2010) (Moor Works-Japan)
- One Ring Zero “Planets” (2010) (Urban Geek Records)
- One Ring Zero “As Smart As We Are” (2010) (Moor Works-Japan)
- One Ring Zero “The Recipe Project” (2011) (Urban Geek Records / Black Balloon Publishing)
EPs
- Schwa (1993) (Brilliant Records)
- Fashion Central (1995) (Spin Art Records)
- One Ring Zero “The Sirens of Red Hot” (2004) (Isota Records)
- One Ring Zero and Rick Moody (2004) (Isota Records)
Film Scores
- Late Bloomer (2004) (dir. Craig Macneill) with One Ring ZeroOne Ring ZeroOne Ring Zero is a modern music group led by Joshua Camp and Michael Hearst that melds many genres and sounds to create a unique type of music.-Instruments:...
- The Good Mother (2009) (dir. Sarah Klein)
- Nicht Lustig (2010) (dir. Gerd Schneider)
- The House Of Suh (2010) (dir. Iris K. Shim)
Books
- As Smart As We Are (2004) (Soft Skull Press)
- New York Spleen (2005) (Naïve Records-France)
- The Recipe Project (2011) (Black Balloon Publishing)
Video
- One Ring Zero “Addendum” (2005) (Urban Geek Records)
- As subject One Ring Zero “As Smart As Thet Are” (2006) (Urban Geek Records)
Further reading
- Michael Hearst interviewed by Vol. 1 Brooklyn
- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=michael-hearst-lemur-robots
- http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/09/one-ring-zeros-recipe-music-project.html
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12773509&ps=rs
External links
- MichaelHearst.com - Official website