Emerging Artists Series
Mentored by Vicki Ray
Pre-show discussion with the artist at 1:15pm.
Pianist Jack Dettling makes his Boston Court debut as part of our 2018 Emerging Artists Series. This Series, back for a 2nd year following a successful launch in 2017, pairs talented young musicians with acclaimed mentors who develop a special program showcasing the young artist’s unique skills and musical viewpoint.
Jack Dettling (Piano) is a pianist, composer, and multimedia artist from Houston, Texas. A composer of electronic and acoustic music, Jack uses field recordings, player pianos, generative electronic elements, text, and the transformation of pre-existing sounds to investigate the crucial role sound plays in the construction of memory and personal identity. A preoccupation with the ideas of voice, memory, and the piano as a cultural artifact drives his work, which most often takes the form of non-linear multimedia environments. He addresses the anxieties inherent in digital communications and reacts to a social environment in which the physical voice is increasingly supplanted by virtual and more impersonal forms of correspondence. His work investigates the irreducible formal relationships between video and sound and seeks new techniques for pianistic performance.
A dedicated performer of 20th- and 21st-century music, he has worked extensively with composers such as Elliott Carter, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Sam Pluta, and Steve Reich, among others. In addition to performing a wide array of established repertoire, he has commissioned and premiered many new works. Festival appearances include the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at MassMoCa, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at New England Conservatory, and the International Festival for Contemporary Performance at Mannes College.
Jack received a dual degree from the New School in Piano Performance and Comparative Literature Studies, where he studied with Thomas Sauer. He received his Masters in Contemporary Piano Performance from Manhattan School of Music, where he studied piano with Christopher Oldfather and Anthony DeMare; composition with Todd Reynolds and Sam Pluta; and performed regularly with the new music ensemble Tactus under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky. He is currently a doctoral student at California Institute of the Arts, where he is a student of Vicki Ray.
