Interview with Eric Chasalow

Brandeis University News

By Lou Bunk —
 Eric Chasalow is a composer known for creating a vivid kind of “super-musique concrète ” that combines traditional instruments with manipulated pre-recorded sounds from any source imaginable. He teaches at Brandeis University, where he directs BEAMS, the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio. 
This past February, Eric and I met in his office at Brandeis and sat down for a good long conversation. While I came with some prepared questions, we freely drifted among many topics: the community of the Columbia-Princeton studios, what a sound carries with it, capturing the energy of Jazz solos, audience, Sound Art, conceptual art, aging, and what has stayed the same in Electronic Music while technology has changed. Below are some excerpts.  Returning to Brandeis to spend some time with Eric was such a treat, and quite meaningful for me, as he was my dissertation advisor and a mentor in electronic music. 
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You wrote that “studios are like communities” in a description of your oral history project: “The Video Archive of the Electro-acoustic Music”. Could you describe the community of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center while you were there? Who were your colleagues and mentors and how did being a part of this community impact you as a composer and musician?
It’s a big question… and I have to give just a little background. I discovered electronic music in high school. There just happened to be a copy of “Silver Apples of the Moon” in the band room, and I thought “this looks cool, what is this?” And at the same time, this local music store lent me an Arp Odyssey, which is like a MiniMoog. They just said, “Here, try and play with this.” They were looking for publicity because I had won an award for Jazz guitar.
Anyway, fast-forward a little bit, I got to college, and I started studying composition ...

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