Sam Pluta - Composer/Improviser

News and such :

Wet Ink – October, 2008, Symphony Space, Manhattan
Wet Ink will be premiering a new work for sax, accordion, flute, clarinet, guitar, laptop, and custom electronic instruments

i-Park Residency – August, 2008, East Haddam, Connecticut
I will be spending 2 weeks in the woods, composing - very nice!

The Walden School – June - Aug., 2008, Dublin, New Hampshire
This will be my 8th summer teaching music to awesome kids in New Hampshire.

GBL and Friends in Bushwick – May 28, 2008, 9pm, Goodbye Blue Monday, Bushwick
Glissando Bin Laden joins Architeuthis Walks on Land and Powersolo for a night of improvised noise and strange danish hillbilly rock

Fün Night and Ffmup present Ffümp Night – May 8, 2008, 9:30pm, The Tank, Manhattan
Glissando Bin Laden joins Dan Iglesia, Seth Cluett, Scott Smallwood, and more for a night of improvised electronic mayhem

12 Nights – Apr. 19, 2008, 8pm, Miami, Florida
Performing my works for solo laptop – "data structures/monoliths II (for Chion)" and "American Tokyo Daydream I (Calypso Sunrise)" – at The Harold Golden Gallery in Miami

Hi-Fi Music Festival – Apr. 16, 2008, 8pm, Monkeytown, Brooklyn
Performing my new work "data structures/monoliths II (for Chion)" as well as playing with exclusiveOr in our performance debut. Also on the program: Dan Iglesia, Mike Vernusky, and Seth Cluett

Columbia Composers – Mar. 9, 2008, 8pm, Roulette, Manhattan
Dave Eggar and Payton MacDonald premiered my new work "SWITCHES" at Roulette as part of the Columbia Composers Concert Series

electronic harvest festival – Nov. 17, 2007, Brooklyn, New York
Performed a set including ATD I for laptop and live video- with special guest Eric Wubbels

Tranzducer 0.010 – Oct. 26, 2007, Brooklyn, New York
Performed with Glissando Bin Laden at Brooklyn's LemurPlex

IceFest – Sept. 29, 2007, Chicago, Ill. - Performed American Tokyo Daydream II (Incognito) with members of ICE Ensemble

TodaysArt Festival – Sept. 20, 2007, Den Haag, Netherlands
Performed American Tokyo Daydream I (Calypso Sunrise) as part of Den Haag's largest music and art festival

RIOT Trio – July 13, 2007, New York, New York
RIOT Trio performed American Tokyo Daydream IV (data structures/monoliths) as part of their spring concert

Ha-Yang Kim – July 13, 2007, Dublin, New Hampshire
Ha-Yang Kim premiered 7:6 as part of the Walden School's annual concert series

NIME Conference – June 10, 2007, New York, NY
Presented Academic Computer Music and performed ATD II (Incognito) at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference

Monkeytown - June 5, 2007, Brooklyn, New York
Performed American Tokyo Daydream I (Calypso Sunrise) at Monkeytown in Brooklyn

So what do I do anyway?

Well...I do a lot of a couple of things. I compose music for people to play, I improvise with my laptop (like right above where you are reading), write electronic music that just plays itself, and I make installations that lots of people can play with. I really like to combine these things, writing music for people to play while I improvise on my laptop, or writing something nobody plays to go along with people improvising, etc, etc... I've worked with dancers, video artists, theater companies, and have even done some film soundtracks.

My recent projects include by improvising quintet Glissando Bin Laden and His Musichideen, who are based in New York City, and my duo with Jeff Synder, exclusiveOr, who make music on vintage 1960's and 70's synths, including one of the original Buchla 200's. A former project, which will hopefully be a future project, is Ready for Japan, a duo with Mike Vernusky who released our self-titled album in 2006.

I've studied music in a lot of cool places. I am currently a DMA student at Columbia University. I got my Masters degree at the University of Texas at Austin and then spent a year at BEAST in the UK. I did my undergrad work at Santa Clara University in California. Probably the best education of all, though, has been teaching for the last six years at The Walden School, which is my favorite place in the world.

If you like my stuff and want to contact me, please email me at spluta at gmail dot com.

©2008 Sam Pluta