About

Composer Bio

Drake Andersen is a Brooklyn-based composer, improviser, and technologist whose creative work spans concert music, electroacoustic soundscapes, interactive sound installations, and software for live performance. His music has been performed and recorded by some of the most preeminent contemporary artists and ensembles including Decoda, Contemporaneous, loadbang, and Jenny Lin, and heard at venues throughout the United States and Europe including Symphony Space, (le) poisson rouge, New World Symphony Center, and the Park Avenue Armory.

Drake’s creative work foregrounds the social processes of music as refracted through the use of technology, improvisation, and innovative performance practices. Recent collaborations include Fossil Record with guitarist Jay Sorce, AI:Rhythm Evolution with percussionist Lisa Pegher, and Bit Flip Radio with flutist Nicole Camacho. Drake is active as a sound designer for theater and dance as well, having previously worked with choreographers including Eliot Feld, Dionne Figgins, Wally Cardona, and Kyle Gerry, and theater artists Chang Nai Wen and Héctor Pascual Álvarez. Drake also releases ambient electronic music under the name Deep Copy.

Drake is frequently engaged as an electronic music specialist for contemporary music ensembles and has developed software for live performance used by musicians around the world. His virtual score software Indra allows a conductor to improvise with an ensemble by transforming the notation on musicians’ screens in real time. His software and technical research have been presented at numerous national and international venues including the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (TENOR), and the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). Drake is also a scholar of electronic and experimental music, with recent publications appearing in the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Journal of Music Theory, Organised Sound, and Perspectives of New Music.

Drake is Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Vassar College, where he teaches composition and electronic music. He has previously taught at Brooklyn College and Montclair State University. His principal composition teachers include Nils Vigeland, Jay Eckardt, and Marjorie Merryman. He studied electronic music with Joel Chadabe, Doug Geers, and Kurt Stallmann. He also studied flute with Robert Dick. Drake holds the Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center, in addition to degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Macalester College.