Phil Corner

b 1933 in New York City (USA). American composer of interdisciplinary works that have been performed throughout the world; he is also active as a performer and writer; studied composition with Mark Brunswick and musicianship and piano with Fritz Jahoda at the City University of New York, where he earned his B.A. in 1955, and composition with Henry Cowell and Otto Luening at Columbia University, where he earned his M.A. in 1959. He also studied analysis with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire from 1955-57, where he earned a deuxième prix, and studied piano privately with Dorothy Taubman in New York from 1961-75. He served in the US Army in South Korea from 1959-61, and studied calligraphy with Ki-sung Kim. With Malcolm Goldstein and James Tenney, he co-founded the new music group Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble in 1963, and with Julie Winter the music-ritual ensemble Sounds out of Silent Spaces in 1972 and with Barbara Benary and Daniel Goode Gamelan Son of Lion in 1976. He participated in various concerts with the name Fluxus in New York in 1962-63 and 1966-67 and served as a resident composer and musician to the Judson Dance Theatre in New York from 1962-65. He taught analysis of new music and experimental composition at the New School for Social Research from 1967-70 and new music and world music at Rutgers University from 1972-92. He is married to the dancer Phoebe Neville, with whom he has often collaborated, and has lived in Italy since 1992.