About Me
HUGH LEVICKGraduating from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, I set off for Paris to write a novel. In Paris I returned to my musical beginnings and the saxophone, studying and playing with Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Oliver Lake, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Richard Horowitz, Alan Silva, Kent Carter, Joelle Leandre, Daunik Lazro, Michel Portal, JF Jenny-Clarke, in New York with John Zorn, Elliot Sharp, Barbara Held, Jeff Beer, and many others. Later in NYC I studied composition at Julliard with Stanley Wolfe and David Diamond, and privately with John Cage and Vinko Globokar.During the 1980's and 1990's in both the US and France I composed , directed and performed the music for over a two dozen stage productions including, working with directors, Matthias Langhoff, Jean-Louis Hourdin, Jean-Paul Wenzel, Joseph Hardy, Mitch Ryan, Michael Arabian, David Schweitzer, among others :"Macbeth", "Ubu Roi", "Request Concert", "Drums in the Night", "Parades" by J. Potocki, contemporary pieces: MOI HOMME, COUPS DE FOUDRE, PASSIONS, VATERLAND, DOUBLAGES, A SUDDEN WEALTH, VILLAGE IN FLAMES (Fassbinder), FEDUNN, THE REDPATH FILLER...My solo performance piece, KID COPY, for a musician and his pre-recorded video double, was produced by the EDAC of Poitiers, France and toured in both France and the US. It was performed in the Bing Theatre at LACMA where two concert readings of my chamber opera , THE EMBRACE OF REASONABLE TERROR, were also given before the opera travelled to Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery as part of the North American Music Festival.A series of performance pieces--BETWEEN 1 &2, SAXOPHONE FLESHTRONICS, MOUTHWATERS, THE END OF THE ROPE-- were performed in New York City at PASS, The Kitchen, Experimental Intermedia Center, Inroads, Just Above Midtown, Roulette, The Storefront; in Buffalo at Hallwalls, Media Study and The North American Music Festival; in Rochester at the Pyramid Arts Center; in Hartford, at Real Art ways; in LA at the Wallenboyd Theatre and LACE; in Paris at the American Center; in Madrid at the FLES Festival; in Strasbourg at the Theatre National and the MUSICA Festival. ONEOSAPH, a solo multimedia performance, was given at The Performing Garage in NYC as part of the Visiting Artists' Series.For the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Celebration I was awrded grants by the NEA and the NY State Council for the Arts to create the Imago Ensemble, a combination of live and video-taped musicians. I also received an Artist-in - Residence award from PASS in NYC, and was awarded a studio in the Cite International des Arts in Paris.As a saxophonist and composer I generated 5 music groups--BEING MUSIC, AVATAR , MUJO, PHASE and the BBLM 4tet--which performed numerous times for the French Radio and at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris as well as touring France and performing in festivals in Royan, Chatellrault, Chateauvallon and Nice. I also had the honor of taking part in the Festival John Cage in Bonn and Paris. A co-founder of the jazz group, BLUES CONNOTATION, I perform for three months every year in the Spanish Baleric islands.Between 1992 and 1995 I did the music for two LA television pilots, and French television viewers heard my music in two films, "Peau de Chat"(1994) and "Semmelweiss"(1995).As a writer I've written TWO EPISODES for the acclaimed TV series, NYPD Blue, aired in the spring of 2000, and in 1987 Paragon Press published my translation of Camus' "American Jornals".In 1995 I began work on the libretto and the music for an opera, BANG FOR THE BUCK, which I finished in 2004. In 2008 BANG will be directed by Calixto Bieito and produced by MC93 Bobigny (Paris) and Teatre Romea (Barcelona).M.E.L.B.A., a string 4tet, DECLINE & FALL for solo piano, TRANSLATION, NOS OTROS-- a violin solo with electronics—and THE ANGEL OF HISTORY, a song for soprano and an 11 piece ensemble, are projected as part of a chamber music CD.
