Gregg Wager profile picture

Gregg Wager

About Me

After an active childhood of piano lessons, public school music programs, a marching band, and learning the pop music of the 1960s as it happened in real time, I went through six long years of music composition study at USC and CalArts. My principle teachers were and still are: Morten Lauridsen, James Hopkins, Robert Linn, Bob Moore, Mel Powell, and Morton Subotnick. I also took a seminar led by Karlheinz Stockhausen in the Hague, Holland, called "the Stockhausen Projekt," so consider him an important teacher and influence. Upon returning to America, I bummed around for a year and landed a job as a pianist/arranger with something called "The Great American Entertainment Company," which found us regulars on the "Pat Boone, USA" television show, performing on the floor at the 1984 Republican National Convention (in Dallas), and folding six months after we started. I then started writing music reviews for a living, as well as pre-computer music copying (lots of black ink and vellum). I contributed regularly to the Los Angeles Times (1985-91), and released an LP, Adjacent Lines and Equal Parts, in 1985 (MF Records 001), along with lots of home-brewed cassette tapes. I was also involved in an organization called the Independent Composers Association, which was an exercise in composers not getting along. I performed a lot around Los Angeles, including the legendary Lhasa Club. I kept adding hours at the Los Angeles Times, working as an editorial assistant in the restaurant (with Ruth Reichl) and film (with Sheila Benson) departments, as well as the music desk, until enough was enough. I moved to Berlin in 1992 and earned a Ph.D. in musicology there in 1996. I also performed and premièred several works there, mostly at the historic Schauspielhaus on the Gendarme Markt. Upon returning to America (the East Coast), I self-published an English version of my dissertation with the title Symbolism as a Compositional Method in the Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen (ISBN 0-9665850-0-3). I spent eight long years in New York, working as an adjunct professor in music composition at SUNY Purchase, as well as helping to organize a celebration of Kurt Weill's music during the centennial celebration of his birth (2000). In 2007 I resided in Seoul, S. Korea, and taught music composition and another graduate seminar at the Korean National University of the Arts. Today I am drifting around Kalleefornia.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 30/06/2006
Band Website: http://www.angelfire.com/music2/greggwager
Influences: (in no particular order, but roughly in clusters) Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Terry Riley, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Harry Partch, Morton Subotnick, Mel Powell, Morten Lauridsen III, James Hopkins, Robert Moore, Robert Linn, The Doors, the Beatles, Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Al DiMeola, Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin, Ravi Shankar, the Minutemen, the Butthole Surfers, the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Frank Zappa, Guillaume de Machaut, John Adams, Helmut Lachenmann, Robert HP Platz, Joan La Barbara, Johannes Brahms, Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Gérard Grisey, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Muzio Clementi, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, La Monte Young, Edgard Varèse, Morton Feldman, Luciano Berio, Kurt Weill, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Joseph Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Gustav Mahler, Josquin des Prez, Fatboy Slim, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Killer Pussy, Oingo Boingo, Madonna, Talking Heads, Devo, the Monkees, the Blues Magoos, Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds, Jethro Tull, Elton John, André Previn, the James Gang, Little Feat, the Who, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Henry Purcell, Thomas Tallis, George Frideric Handel, Krzysztof Penderecki, Györgi Ligeti, Franz Waxman, Tiny Tim, Syd Barrett, Stan Ridgway, Junior Vasquez, Maurice Jarre, Rio Reiser, die Prinzen, Lucy Lectric, Marilyn Manson, the Spice Girls, Slipknot, Kittie, (hed) pe, Beck, Kurt Cobain, System of a Down, Rammstein, B. B. King, Benjamin Britten, Cornelius Cardew, Michael Nyman, Brian Eno, Béla Bartók, Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Prokofiev, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Arvo Pärt, George Crumb, Peter Schickele, Wendy Carlos, John Philip Sousa, Scott Joplin
Record Label: Huwon Productions
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

Stockhausens Journey Back to the Dog Star

As his mystical reflections and musical compositions clearly relate, Karlheinz Stockhausen believed death was an opportunity for rebirth. Now, like the death of his favorite hero in literature, Josef ...
Posted by on Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:51:00 GMT

My New York Observer Pieces Are Back Online

If you've never read them, I think they're worth the time to read:   Paradise Glossed Hale Britannica
Posted by on Tue, 22 May 2007 22:43:00 GMT

A Seoul Tribute to Ligeti

Undoubtedly, tributes to György Ligeti, who died last year, will deservedly appear in scattered locations across our international music world, which is remarkably getting smaller if you're trying to ...
Posted by on Sat, 31 Mar 2007 15:20:00 GMT

Punk Rock Journal

After spending so much time cataloguing and numbering my reviews, I still remind myself that a truly complete list would include four modest publications for two punk rock magazines that I wrote betwe...
Posted by on Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:28:00 GMT

Tan Dun's New Opera

Tan Dun's three-hour-plus opera, The First Emperor, can't possibly leave anyone of its audience members without an opinion, although the saying that compares opinions to a part of the anatomy and conc...
Posted by on Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:08:00 GMT

Another Letter to the Village Voice Editor

Interesting that I recently spilled my heart out in this blog ("Punk Rock Journal") about the so-called "hardcore scene" in Los Angeles during the Reagan era. Over at the Village Voice, the new pop mu...
Posted by on Wed, 04 Oct 2006 08:16:00 GMT

The Long Tail

Looking Down on a Trend: Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (Hyperion)   I admit that I was jealous when I learned that the editor of Wired magazine had written a book with a campy title that explored...
Posted by on Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:49:00 GMT

Circus Contraption

I have a secret hideaway called the Coyote Ugly Saloon, where I can partake in naughtiness via drinking and flirting with cowgirls. On our honest days, we the patrons admit that our darker alter egos ...
Posted by on Sat, 19 Aug 2006 15:23:00 GMT

My Letter in the Village Voice

Sometimes a little bombast goes a long way. A letter by me ("Rock 'n' Rollover") to the Village Voice was dubbed by this most famous alternative weekly in America "Letter of the Week." Although I agre...
Posted by on Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:49:00 GMT

Pete Robbins and Centric at Detour

More than a few times I've been to this tiny bar a couple blocks away from my apartment called the Detour, which is a great place to sip Guinness during happy hour and listen to the neighbors yam on a...
Posted by on Sun, 30 Jul 2006 10:32:00 GMT