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Eric Leonardson is a
Chicago-based composer, radio artist, sound designer, instrument inventor,
improvisor, visual artist, and teacher. He has devoted a majority of his
professional career to unorthodox approaches to sound and its
instrumentation with a broad understanding of texture, atmosphere and
microtones.
Leonardson's interest in
creating new sounds for performance and studio composition led to the
invention of the Springboard,
an electroacoustic percussion instrument made from readily available
materials. Its sounds belie its humble origins, thanks to the rich
enharmonic timbres of bowed coil springs and the curious sound of the crude
wooden daxophones—all amplified by a single, inexpensive piezo-electric
contact mic. Leonardson's music resists categorization. Evoking a range of
associations, his work was once described as "...ritualistic music,
electronically synthesized industrial vibrations miraculously created with
ordinary household objects...."—Carol Burbank, Chicago Reader
Chicago's performance art scene
provided the environment where critical thinking and artistic partnerships
were common practice. From studyng visual art media to the time-based media
of sound, video, and performance at The School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, Leonardson's skills as a drummer and audio technician featured in
works by his fellow students and teacher: Werner Herterich, Tom Jaremba,
and Brendan de Vallance. Leonardson
was also the drummer in eclectic rock bands, such as Hand To Mouth led by
singer, songwriter, and performance artist, Gene Pool.
By the early-90s Leonardson's
focus on sound and music making drew him into the local experimental,
improvised music, dance and theater. He created numerous recorded
electroacoustic scores for award-winning South African choreographer Robyn Orlin while performing in the
experimental sound trio Wormwood with Spencer Sundell and Dylan Posa. As a theater sound
designer Leonardson has worked with Lynn
Book and Theo Bleckmann, the Curious Theater Branch, Prop Theater, and Latino Chicago
Theater. In 1995 Leonardson co-founded one of Chicago's foremost
experimental theater companies, Plasticene,
in which he continues to compose, design, and perform.
His first record (cassette)
release entitled "Urban Archeology/Site Removal" (1993) features
a live sound performance project with Sundell and Posa, as well as the
renowned Chicago-based percussionists Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake,
with lighting by Christian Pretorius, and acting by Kim Bruce. Leonardson
also performed regularly with sound artist Steve Barsotti from 1994 to
1998. Leonardson performs with experimental vocalist Carol Genetti,
an ongoing partnership started in 1997. In 2007 he formed the group Auris with fellow musicians and
composers Christopher Preissing and Julia Miller, and
recently joined by Guillermo Gregorio. With Canadian sound-radio artist, Anna Friz he has
toured through the eastern US and created works for broadcast on Kunstradio, Vienna
and Deutschlandradio, Berlin.
As an improvisor, Leonardson
performs in numerous ad hoc music groupings with artists from diverse
aesthetic backgrounds and locales, among them: Philadelphia percussionist Toshi Makihara; Hamburg trumpeter Birgit Uhler; Jason Soliday; Tokyo composer and
improvisor Yasuhiro Otani;
Chicago avant-bassist and shamisen player Tatsu Aoki; Bay Area guitarist John
Shiurba; Italian composer and drummer Jacopo Andreini; Berlin
saxophonist Gert Anklam;
Philadelphia free improvising saxophonist Jack Wright;
multi-instrumentalist Jim Baker, Bay Area cellist Bob Marsh; Chicago
"anti-cellist", Fred
Lonberg-Holm, and Baltimore "sound mechanic" Neil Feather.
Leonardson is the director of
the recently founded World
Listening Project. He also co-founded theExperimental Sound Studiowhere—in the
late-80s and early-90s—he coordinated "Sounds From Chicago," one
of the city's first internationally broadcast radio art programs.
Leonardson's discography includes
the CD Animus (1998) with Carol Genetti,
his solo release Radio Reverie in the Waiting Place (1999), and Rarebit
(2008) with Steven A. Barsotti. He has
tracks featured on numerous compilations releases, among them: Call For
Silence and Noise To Meet You U.S. His "Other
Music" (2005) created and performed in Toronto with Anna Friz, Chris Brookes,
and Evalyn Parry can be heard on sonus.ca
and also on the CD Deep Wireless 3 from New Adventures In Sound Art. Leonardson's
writings on sound and performance have been published in books and journals
since the late-80s, most recently in Musicworks, Leonardo Music Journal,
and eContact!
10.3. Leonardson is a recipient of an Illinois Arts
Council Media Arts Fellowship (2002 and 2006), and an Adjunct
Associate Professor in the First Year Program and the Department of Sound
at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
where he received his Time Arts MFA in 1983.
Further documentation:
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