Career highlights
2008 - Not Nice Music closed as a Doing Business As
2007 - "Typhoid Mary" and "Alamo!" released on a CD!
2006 - Completed first draft of manuscript of "Play" (technically 12/8/2005!)
2005 - Baruch Skeer's live radio interview on Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar
2004 - Honored by New Music Connoisseur magazine at their annual gala
2003 - Live radio interview on Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar
2002 - Raw Impressions Music Theatre production of "Hoover," a collaboration with the Tony Award-winning Rachel Sheinkin at the Club at LaMaMa ETC
2001 - Feature article on American Music Theater in NewMusicBox
2000 - Performance of "NewOp DooWop" in Brussels
1999 - Reading of "Yisroayl B'Mitzroyim" by Gregg Smith Singers
1998 - US and European premieres of "Alamo!"
1997 - Scene Four of "This is Therapy?" performed in Cambridge, England and NYC
1995 - Excerpt from scena ("Alamo!") for solo voice performed in Toronto and NYC
1989 - Commissioned oboe sonatina ("J.J. Comes to Cooper") performed in NYC
1988 - Dance-theatre piece ("Typhoid Mary"), a collaboration with choreographer Peg Hill, performed in NYC
1987 - Commissioned song cycle ("Love Poems from the Hebrew") performed in NYC
1985 - Received Tau Beta Pi Laureate Award for Diverse Achievements at national ceremony with Lee Iaccoca
1983 - Choral work ("The Clean Platter") for chorus, soprano, barbershop quartet, string quartet and piano premiered in NYC
1983 - "Butterfly Dream" excerpt broadcast on WBAI-FM
1981 - Full-length ballet ("Butterfly Dream") commissioned by the Liliana Belfiore Dance Company

Accomplishments - Barry Drogin's contributions to musical history:

Invented and used partial triplets (circa 1975)

Brought first Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) to New York City (to PASS (Public Access Synthesizer Studio)) (circa 1980)

Discovered Burnett Cross Free Music Machine in attic of Percy Grainger museum (circa 1980)

Attended every concert and asked a question at every symposia of "Horizons '83 --- Since 1968, A New Romanticism?," the New York Philharmonic new music festival (1983)

Invented and used Hebrew transliteration system for singers (1986)

Invented and used musical gestures as long-form structural element (derived from Hebraic chant) (1991)

Revived scena (in a cappella form) to enable a "third stream" of music-theatre performance (1995)

Created and maintained NewOp/NonOp website (2000)

September 11 new music poster boy (2001)

First to review musical scores (for New Music Connoisseur magazine) (2002)

Created first multi-media-enabled musical analysis (2004)

Quotations - Barry Drogin's contributions to musical thought:

"One can be a lost zombie controlled by Hollywood puppeteers and a thinking human being at the same time." ("Film + Music = Zombie-ism?," circa 1981)

"We really do not need praise if readers only read." ("An Exhortation," circa 1983)

"There is no justification for an entrance fee of any amount." ("Competition Guidelines - A Composer's View," circa 1984)

"I believe in the validity of all aesthetic experience." (C-Opera, 1996)

"The history of music is, I believe, written by young composers." ("Sealing the Coffin of Twentieth Century Music," 1999)

"In some cases, computers will write the music and play the music (if we could only get the computers to listen to the music, too, we could all go out and do something more satisfying than listen to it ourselves)." ("Sealing the Coffin of Twentieth Century Music," 1999)

"Words are the most abstract of all." ("Is Music Political?," 1999)

"The aesthetic cultural manifestations which previously existed under an idea of 'art' will be replaced by propaganda, self-aggrandizement, and marketing." ("The Death of Western Art," 2000)

"New music is chamber music." (NewMusicBox, 2/1/2001)

"New American Opera is Canadian." (NewMusicBox, 4/1/2001)

"The myth, the mystique, the purity of the 'artist' is an ideal I have long ago lost faith in.... I am in favor of a discourse that is practical in nature, and is not reliant on an incantory repetition of equally elusive terms such as 'great' and 'masterpiece.'" ("A Portrait of the Artist as a Dead Man," 2001)

The "comfort audience" vs. the "curiosity audience" ("Comfort and Curiosity: A Consideration of the Audience's Primal Needs," 2001)

"The 'art for art’s sake' element is embedded and inseparable from the cultural impetus – the act of creation contains within it both the sociological why and the aesthetic what." ("Play," 2002)

"We create aesthetic experiences because we like to play." ("Play," 2004)

"The stagnation of identity, the very idea of identity, is a remnant of the old, non-interactive culture." ("Talkin’ ‘Bout My Interactive Generation," 2004)

"I am not becoming an amateur musician. I am not retiring as a professional musician. I choose to become an unprofessional musician." ("Being and Nothingness," 2008)

Response options: (unless you give permission, all responses will be confidential)

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Last Updated: February 15, 2009