Paul Nauert

Paul Nauert is a Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches music theory and composition. Nauert began activities in composition and piano performance around the age of 10, and received national awards in composition from MTNA and BMI during his pre-college career. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where he was awarded the McCurdy Prize in composition, and Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. in music theory in 1997 with the assistance of a Mellon Foundation Fellowship.  His early interest in interdisciplinary pursuits led to an additional undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering (University of Rochester), with an emphasis on signal processing, during his Eastman years.Nauert joined the music faculty of the U.C. Santa Cruz in 1996. He has published articles on a variety of topics including computer models of musical rhythm, pitch structure in posttonal music, and the theories of Joseph Schillinger and their influence on the composer George Gershwin. He has also created software applications for computer-assisted composition, including the OMTimePack and OMPitchField libraries for IRCAM's OpenMusic project. Nauert's compositions, mainly for solo and small-ensemble forces, reflect an ongoing interest in: intimate/private discourse as a model for musical rhetoric, the coloristic use of harmony, and fluid or eccentric rhythms that resist assimilation to a steady pulse. His music has been performed at venues such as New York's Merkin Hall, Miller Theater, and Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the BGSU New Music & Art Festival in Ohio, the SoundField Festival in Chicago, Resonances at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Stuttgart International Guitar Festival. A recording of his composition Subtext performed by guitarist David Tanenbaum is available from New Music Works. Bio courtesy of his faculty page.