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"I suppose what drew me into music was its
effect on me, as well as the fun of riding music's changing energies with other people.
I kept tinkering with both performing and composing, trying out different styles, different formats, different roles, different
attitudes, different jobs. BASSOONIST
COMPOSER One and Many, which features children and guest musicians performing alongside a professional ensemble (including sections composed by the children), was featured by the Apple Hill Chamber Players on their "Playing for Peace" tours in the Middle East and Northern Ireland. Mixed Blessings and War Scrap were commissioned by the innovative Los Angeles series Pacific Serenades. Prairie Blessings combines a solo bassoon with a computer, electronics, and slides of unplowed Illinois prairie. His sextet Simple Pleasures was commissioned by the South Bay Chamber Music Society to commemorate their 40th anniversary in 2003, a month before the first performances of his new Concerto for bassoon and orchestra, commissioned by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Keene Chamber Orchestra (NH), and the Santa Rosa Symphony. John has also written comic pieces that poke fun at the concert ritual and other human foibles. In Possessed a solo cellist speaks the thoughts that run through a performer's mind during a concert. The Creation of the World for solo bass covers the whole of history with music, a beach ball, a headlamp, and individually-wrapped cheese slices. What's Your Musical I.Q. (A Quiz) combines musical examples and test questions to parody music appreciation classes, standardized tests, and magazine quizzes. EDUCATOR/INNOVATOR John has helped to design new concert formats for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Oregon BachFestival, Skaneateles Festival, Pacific Classical Winds, and XTET. He has given preconcert lectures at the Oregon Bach Festival and the Chamber Music Festival of the East. His week-long residency at the University of Oklahoma was called "Enlivening Live Music." He has been a featured speaker at the national conventions of Americans for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy. As Artist in Residence for two years at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music, John facilitated design teams of community members, parents, staff, and faculty to create new kinds of concert events and innovative enhancements for administration and teaching. (His paper about those projects, "Creative Teamwork," describes using artists' methods for organizational problem-solving.) During the 1980s and '90s, John worked with computer scientists at Atari, Apple, and Disney Imagineering, consulting on projects for Alan Kay, one of the inventors of personal computing. While computer scientists developed new software for enduser programming and tested it with children and their teachers, John explored the effects of new and old technologies on learning and expression. He composed pieces involving computers, he programmed software for classroom use, and he researched creative thinking in classrooms with education researcher Doreen Nelson. He wrote about learning environments and about the possibilities and pitfalls of computer use in classrooms (see "Computers & Squeak as Environments for Learning." This is a PFD file--it requires Adobe Acrobat reader.) John is on the boards of the Pasadena Waldorf School, the Design-Based Learning Laboratory at Art Center College of Design, and Chamber Music America. He teaches bassoon students for California State University, Fullerton. WRITER FACILITATOR He facilitated a conference for the Career Directors using Open Space Technology, a strategy for self-organized meetings. PERSON Born in Oakland, California in 1951, he grew up in Fresno, moving to southern California to attend California Institute of the Arts. Afterward he got swept into Los Angeles' freelance whirlpool. For more on John's background, influences, and attitudes, see the Bassoon Concerto Interview by Carole McEdwards. He has a persistent case of travel bug, which has no cure and requires periodic treatment. He hikes when he can. He takes photographs of nature's beauty, urban landscapes, amusing signs, and his children. He loves to hear people laugh. He frequently writes about himself in the third person. [Web editor's note: We could find no example of this in his writings.]
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