Stuart Dempster
"My interest in 'healing' music stems from nearly forty years association with composer Pauline Oliveros. She stated (ca. 1970) that music should make one feel good. Agreeing, I re-evaluated the Australian Aboriginal didjeridu, known to be therapeutic through its special breathing requirements. However, it wasn't until my 'Abbey' recording six years later that I became aware of my ability to raise people's life energy. I then began a search for a music that would allow people to open up and breathe. By the early 1980's I learned to make the audience into a musical instrument by having them sing with my playing in special ways."
Dempster performs and improvises with trombone and didjeridu. He is known for his performances of new works that he has commissioned and for his recorded performances with trombone and didjeridu in a array of unusual, resonant settings, including caverns and churches.
He has been a Fulbright Scholar, Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts composer grants. As a soloist, he tours regularly throughout the United States and Europe, performing music by Luciano Berio, Donald Erb, Robert Erickson, Andrew Imbrie, Ernst Krenek, and Robert Suderburg, as well as his own works. He has toured with Merce Cunningham, and is author of The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms. Dempster has been a Creative Associate at the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, principal trombonist with the Oakland Symphony, and member of the Performing Group at Mills College.
Dempster currently lives and works in Seattle, Washington. He is on the faculty of the University of Washington, Seattle.
Available CDs
