Ingram Marshall

by Joslyn LayneWhile composer Ingram Marshall's earliest compositions were electronic works, he has increasingly written for live musicians, including the Kronos Quartet. In the mid-'60s, he studied under Vladimir Ussachevsky, among others, while in another program at Columbia. Marshall then learned from Morton Subotnick, first (briefly) in Greenwich Village, then at Cal Arts as his assistant during the early '70s. It was while earning his masters at Cal Arts that Marshall was first exposed to Indonesian music, which he then added to his studies. While he blended his current musical interests in his own work (writing pieces for electronics and Balinese flute, for instance), Marshall continued to explore other styles of composition as well, as when he traveled to Sweden in the mid-'70s on a Fulbright Fellowship to study text-sound composition. "Fog Tropes" (1982) is the best known of his works that incorporate live (real time) electronic manipulation. From the mid-'80s on, Marshall has written ensemble music, not necessarily with electronics. His work for the Kronos Quartet includes "Voces Resonae" (1984) and, more recently, "Fog Tropes II." He also composed the orchestral, one-movement piece "Sinfonia 'Dolce far Niente.'"