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CrystalMoonConeMusic
(Performers: Matthew Ellison – harmonica, Stephen Rush- Whistles and Elk Call, Rufus the German Shepherd, watching his flock by day)
Stephen Rush is a Full Professor at the University of Michigan, where he has taught for 25 years. He earned a doctorate at the Eastman School of Music and studied with third-stream pioneer Gunther Schuller, David Liptak and Samuel Adler.
He teaches courses in Music Composition, Theory, Technology, Jazz, and Dance. He also directs the highly successful experiential course called Creative Process, UARTS 250/550, annually offered to 80 all-campus undergraduate students, with faculty from Architecture, Engineering, Art and Design, and Music/Dance.
Rush’s extensive compositional output includes five operas, chamber music (some of which is standard repertory), orchestra work and over 150 scores for dancers. His compositions have been recorded and performed worldwide by the Warsaw and Detroit Symphonies and members of the New York and Cleveland Philharmonics, and recently, classical ensembles in Spain, Korea, and Switzerland. As a performer, Rush has presented his multi-media work in Japan, Europe (Florence, Berlin, and Budapest, etc.), Latin America, and India. He has over 30 CD’s to his credit ranging from electronic experimental music, orchestra performances, chamber music, and jazz.
Rush is the director of the Digital Music Ensemble.(DME) at the University of Michigan. With DME, Rush has premiered works by John Cage, Philip Glass, and LaMonte Young, and has recorded with Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. DME is widely known for its site-specific work, “Gypsy Pond Music”, which is performed annually at the University of Michigan and elsewhere.
Stephen Rush works frequently as a jazz musician, performing with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Pauline Oliveros, his bands “Yuganaut” and Listening Music for the Age of the Crystal Moon Cone, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and the late Peter Kowald. His new book, Better Get It In Your Soul., discusses radical approaches to church liturgy, and is under contract with RogueArts in Paris, to complete and collaborate with Jazz legend Ornette Coleman on their theories of improvisation and social justice.
He has studied South Indian Classical vocal music for twenty years with Sharada Kumar (Ann Arbor), Sashi Kumar (Varinasi, India) and Kamala Rajalakshmi (Mysore, India). For the last seven years he has taken a dozen students to India for one month in the summer to study Classical Indian Dance and Music, as well as Yoga, Philosophy and Sociology. His work in this area is recognized internationally, including frequent requests to speak about Indian Music and Culture in the U.S. and in India, with an invitation to be the keynote speaker at the International Peace Conference in Mysore, India, 2011.
He also has an interesting side-career, having publicly interviewed such varied luminaries as Laurie Anderson, Ravi Shankar, LaMonte Young, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ornette Coleman, the Kronos Quartet, and revered Swami Chinmayananda.
Stephen Rush is a Professor at the University of Michigan, where he works with students from music, dance, art, and engineering as the director of the Digital Music Ensemble.
Rush has had premieres in five continents, and released over 20 CD’s, as well as a book on Jazz theology called Better Get It In Your Soul.
Rush has premiered and recorded his music with major orchestras and performed with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Pauline Oliveros, his bands “Yuganaut” and Listening Music for the Age of the Crystal Moon Cone, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and the late Peter Kowald.
