Name Alden Jenks | Role Composer | |
Education University of California, Berkeley, Yale University | ||
Alden Jenks - Afterworld
Alden Jenks (born August 10, 1940) is an American composer.
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Biography
Alden Jenks was born in Michigan and received a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. He studied composition with Lawrence Moss, Andrew Imbrie and Seymour Shifrin. He also studied composition in 1967 with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the University of California, Davis (Kramer 1998, 248), and electronic music with David Tudor and Anthony Gnazzo.
As a performer, he served as a controller of the live electronics for Stockhausen’s 1967 Darmstadt collective-composition project, Ensemble (Gehlhaar 1968, 39 and 75), and performed on synthesizer in the 25th anniversary concert of Terry Riley's In C in 1989, released as a recording in 1995 on New Albion Records CD NA071.
As a composer he is primarily known for his work in electronic media, and is Professor of Composition and Director of the E. L. Wiegand Composition Studio at the San Francisco Conservatory. John Adams has cited him as an influential colleague, crediting Jenks with introducing him to Wagner (Adams 2004). His composition Nagasaki won the Bourges Electronic Music Competition, and Marrying Music won the Viotti-Valsesia International Music Competition award.