Biography
Erich Barganier (b. 1991) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist hailing from St. Petersburg, Florida, who currently resides between New York City and Montreal. He writes chamber, orchestral, film, solo instrumental and electronic music that explores experimental technology, extended techniques, improvisation, generative processes, the perception of noise and new forms of notation. His music has been released on People Places Records, Belts and Whistles Records, Nebularosa Records, NOUS Records, and Janus Music and Sound and has been recognized by ASCAP and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Erich's works have been featured at Diffrazioni Festival, The International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Mostly Modern Festival, The New Music Gathering, Spectra Malaysia, National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, La Vitrola, New Music New College, New York University, Spectrum NYC, The University of Wisconsin, The University of Georgia, The University of North Georgia, the Florida International Toy Piano Festival, and The University of Alabama among others.
He has written for Mivos Quartet, NOW Ensemble, Ashley Bathgate, Sybarite5, Quince, Bearthoven, Sandbox Percussion Ensemble, Esther Lamneck, and Righteous Girls, among others. He has served as an artist-in-residence at CIRMMT (McGill Univserity, Montreal, QC) and Westben Artist Retreat (Westben, ON).
Erich began studying composition and theory under Mark Dancigers while attending New College of Florida (B.A., 2014). He pursued further studies at New York University, privately studying under Julia Wolfe, Robert Honstein, Joan La Barbara and Tae Hong Park (M.M. 2019).
He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2014 and taught English at the Belarus State University of Culture and Arts in Minsk while collecting regional folk songs and performing traditional American music across Eastern Europe.
As a film composer, Erich scored Lost in Buffalo City, a horror movie directed by Raymond “Skip” Wallace that has gone on to win the best film award from multiple festivals, including the Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival (Jerome, Arizona), and the Asheville Film Festival (Asheville, North Carolina).
As a performer, Erich has studied and played music across a wide swathe of styles and genres. His "twinkling instrumental work" as part of the Baker-Barganier Duo has been praised by Bao-le Huu of the Orlando Weekly and helped garner the title of "Best Local Album Release of 2017" from Tampa Bay's Creative Loafing for the Baker-Barganier Duo's debut album ...and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Erich has additionally performed as a multi-instrumentalist, as a solo artist, and in ensembles, having supported the likes of ETHEL, Robert Mirabel, Esther Lamneck and many others.
His scores can be purchased directly through this website's contact form or through a university via his publisher, BabelScores.
Artist Statement
Presenting engaging musical works, both inside and outside of the concert hall, lies at the heart of my compositional output. Whether these pieces take the form of chamber ensembles or solos written for live musicians, long-form multichannel sonic pieces, or multimedia installations that blend homemade and self-processed video with original synthetic music, my artistic output carves a niche in the current musical landscape that blends together the grotesque and strange, pushing back against contemporary strains of art music.
As a performer-composer who works across musical genres and as a trained visual artist, I have become acutely aware of the importance of flexibility and combining influences from a variety of styles. My own compositions not only marry timbres and sonic material from jazz, experimental electronica, and the contemporary classical musical styles, but my compositional process has been greatly inspired by the creative methods outlined in Andre Breton’s manifestos of surrealism. I strive to develop my works with these methods in mind, which include collage and automatic writing, among many others.
I translate these techniques from their visual and literary counterparts to the audio world in order to accurately capture the spirit of creation of each method. For example, in lieu of traditional collage, I incorporate sonic quotations using electronic samples taken from television or radio advertisement or notated phrases lifted from famous operas or orchestral works that live musicians can realize. For notated works, I use graphic notation and non-standard musical notation to encourage the performers to improvise, creating the same spontaneous feeling in a live performance as automatic writing generates in literature.
In addition to using surrealist creation techniques in a sonic context, experimental and generative coding techniques inform the vast majority of my installation work and electronic music. I actively code in the computer language Supercollider and use the flexibility of the language to create works that give the computer agency to make creative decisions. I accomplish this through the use of neural networks and parameters that rely on randomness to give my pieces a sense of life that otherwise not be heard in a fixed installation. This form of music creation not only provides the audience with a distinct sound world full of unheard timbres that have never before been heard, but can also marry the above listed surrealist techniques into an electronic context.
My work blends elements of violence and absurdity that jar the listener. It is visceral, unrelenting and captures the grotesque essence of the modern world in which we live.
Erich Barganier (b. 1991) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist hailing from St. Petersburg, Florida, who currently resides between New York City and Montreal. He writes chamber, orchestral, film, solo instrumental and electronic music that explores experimental technology, extended techniques, improvisation, generative processes, the perception of noise and new forms of notation. His music has been released on People Places Records, Belts and Whistles Records, Nebularosa Records, NOUS Records, and Janus Music and Sound and has been recognized by ASCAP and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Erich's works have been featured at Diffrazioni Festival, The International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Mostly Modern Festival, The New Music Gathering, Spectra Malaysia, National Sawdust, Le Poisson Rouge, La Vitrola, New Music New College, New York University, Spectrum NYC, The University of Wisconsin, The University of Georgia, The University of North Georgia, the Florida International Toy Piano Festival, and The University of Alabama among others.
He has written for Mivos Quartet, NOW Ensemble, Ashley Bathgate, Sybarite5, Quince, Bearthoven, Sandbox Percussion Ensemble, Esther Lamneck, and Righteous Girls, among others. He has served as an artist-in-residence at CIRMMT (McGill Univserity, Montreal, QC) and Westben Artist Retreat (Westben, ON).
Erich began studying composition and theory under Mark Dancigers while attending New College of Florida (B.A., 2014). He pursued further studies at New York University, privately studying under Julia Wolfe, Robert Honstein, Joan La Barbara and Tae Hong Park (M.M. 2019).
He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2014 and taught English at the Belarus State University of Culture and Arts in Minsk while collecting regional folk songs and performing traditional American music across Eastern Europe.
As a film composer, Erich scored Lost in Buffalo City, a horror movie directed by Raymond “Skip” Wallace that has gone on to win the best film award from multiple festivals, including the Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival (Jerome, Arizona), and the Asheville Film Festival (Asheville, North Carolina).
As a performer, Erich has studied and played music across a wide swathe of styles and genres. His "twinkling instrumental work" as part of the Baker-Barganier Duo has been praised by Bao-le Huu of the Orlando Weekly and helped garner the title of "Best Local Album Release of 2017" from Tampa Bay's Creative Loafing for the Baker-Barganier Duo's debut album ...and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Erich has additionally performed as a multi-instrumentalist, as a solo artist, and in ensembles, having supported the likes of ETHEL, Robert Mirabel, Esther Lamneck and many others.
His scores can be purchased directly through this website's contact form or through a university via his publisher, BabelScores.
Artist Statement
Presenting engaging musical works, both inside and outside of the concert hall, lies at the heart of my compositional output. Whether these pieces take the form of chamber ensembles or solos written for live musicians, long-form multichannel sonic pieces, or multimedia installations that blend homemade and self-processed video with original synthetic music, my artistic output carves a niche in the current musical landscape that blends together the grotesque and strange, pushing back against contemporary strains of art music.
As a performer-composer who works across musical genres and as a trained visual artist, I have become acutely aware of the importance of flexibility and combining influences from a variety of styles. My own compositions not only marry timbres and sonic material from jazz, experimental electronica, and the contemporary classical musical styles, but my compositional process has been greatly inspired by the creative methods outlined in Andre Breton’s manifestos of surrealism. I strive to develop my works with these methods in mind, which include collage and automatic writing, among many others.
I translate these techniques from their visual and literary counterparts to the audio world in order to accurately capture the spirit of creation of each method. For example, in lieu of traditional collage, I incorporate sonic quotations using electronic samples taken from television or radio advertisement or notated phrases lifted from famous operas or orchestral works that live musicians can realize. For notated works, I use graphic notation and non-standard musical notation to encourage the performers to improvise, creating the same spontaneous feeling in a live performance as automatic writing generates in literature.
In addition to using surrealist creation techniques in a sonic context, experimental and generative coding techniques inform the vast majority of my installation work and electronic music. I actively code in the computer language Supercollider and use the flexibility of the language to create works that give the computer agency to make creative decisions. I accomplish this through the use of neural networks and parameters that rely on randomness to give my pieces a sense of life that otherwise not be heard in a fixed installation. This form of music creation not only provides the audience with a distinct sound world full of unheard timbres that have never before been heard, but can also marry the above listed surrealist techniques into an electronic context.
My work blends elements of violence and absurdity that jar the listener. It is visceral, unrelenting and captures the grotesque essence of the modern world in which we live.