My practice is guided by ways of thinking from engineering and the arts to the point where I can’t distinguish them. Writing code is shaped by aesthetic thinking (I love beautiful code!) and can, on the best of days, be generative, enabling ways of being musical that would be inconceivable otherwise. These ways of being musical, in turn, direct my coding, creating (on the best of days) a vibrating, creative feedback loop.
Dan Trueman is a fiddler, electronic musician, developer of new instruments, and composer of music for ensembles of all shapes and sizes. His tools are a first-of-its-kind Hardanger d’Amore fiddle by Salve Håkedal, played with a baroque bow by Michel Jamonneau; the prepared digital piano bitKlavier, which he invented; and the ChucK music programming language by Ge Wang. He has collaborated with many ensembles and individuals working across various disciplines, from musicians to scientists, choreographers, filmmakers, and poets.
His score “There Might Be Others,” with choreographer Rebecca Lazier and scientist Naomi Ehrich Leonard, won the 2016 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Music Composition. Dan’s work has also been recognized by fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Composers Forum. He has received commissions from the Barlow Endowment and the Fulbright Commission, among others.
Dan is currently at work on “12 Preludes for bitKlavier” with Cristina Altamura and Adam Sliwinski; “Midden Find” for fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Contemporaneous; and “Olagón,” an opera featuring Iarla Ó Lionáird and Gelsey Bell, with text by Paul Muldoon and directed by Mark DeChiazza.
A Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Music at Princeton University, Dan teaches counterpoint, electronic music, and composition.
