Dick Turner 
Musique Classique / Musique Classique Eclectique (8747 visits)

Dick Turner, is a composer.

I was born 2 December 1959 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. I am an auto-didact, this means I have spent my life trying to understand what it means to compose music.

Here are some of the conclusions I have reached. Note: they are open to change without prior notice.

Composing music is the expression of freedom. Freedom is the ability to make a choice in the face of the random. When I began to compose music, I found it very difficult to make what I felt were "real choices".

I thought somehow that the job of the composer was to find pre-existent sonic realities. I realize now that I was, in a certain way correct but at the time I did not have the technique, the knowledge, to realize my ideas.

I recall sitting at the piano and playing the note D4. I played it repeatedly wondering where it should go "logically". This was a sort of existential question that weighed upon my mind for years.

The solution to this question is to a large degree the meaning of what I have done musically. Composing is also a form of non-verbal Philosophy. Like written Philosophy which recombines words to form concepts to provide a perspective on existence, music recombines tones to the same end. Musical ideas are expressed emotionally through the shifts in material. A composer creates a musical moment, structures it, and then contrasts it with the next musical moment.

This shift takes place repeatedly throughout a work of music. At the end of a piece of music an Image arrives. I will illustrate this idea. Think of a sculpture. We stand before a sculpture and it is a solid unchanging object. It is we who bring time to it. In music, the situation is reversed. The music brings time to us, it unfolds in time before us. And at the end of a piece of music an Image, a Whole, appears in our minds: it is the accumulation of the consecutive events in the piece. The creation of this Image, this Whole, is the Philosophical essence of music.

Composing is a form of Alchemy. Alchemy deals with taking base elements and combining them to produce something greater that the parts. I believe every artist wishes to use his art to alter reality, of course this means to alter the perceptions of those who hear but also the artist seeks the magical combination which will alter all reality. It is something like a magic formula, an "abracadabra" which once said changes the Universe. This may seem unreasonable, but that does not make it untrue.

Finally, composing is Life. Each person must choose a path by which he navigates existence. It is a way to approach being. Composing music is a perspective. It is what Walt Whitman called "The me, myself". It is the center to which the composer returns to in the midst of a world which may at times seem mad; a world which wishes to, for example, muzzle us, to lock us up, to control our physical and mental freedoms, to limit our range of choice. Composing is all of this and endlessly more - for composing, as history has shown, is whatever we choose to make of it in the expression of our individual intellectual freedom.

Website

https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfV3Qmocipiu6JeUOJ-fnzXB4d_QK08Lo

 

Discography



 

Discographie de Dick Turner

Midnight Special Music Label
https://shop.midnightspecialrecords.com/album/midnight-specials

Album Midnight Specials
Song : Contrôle-moi

Clapping Music
45 tours
I want a Girlfriend/Sawing Wood
http://clappingmusic.com/catalogue/clap041-traditional-monsters

Quixote Music
As Dick Turner - Man in a Pit CD
https://quixotemusic-records.bandcamp.com/album/man-in-a-pit

As Traditional Monsters (my rock group)
Album Push the Panic Button vinyl
https://quixotemusic-records.bandcamp.com/album/push-the-panic-button

My Bandcamp
Album The New Normal (under the name of Dick Tator)
CD & digital album
https://dickturner.bandcamp.com/album/13-songs-for-the-new-normal
Digital albums (selection)
Opera Totem and Taboo
https://dickturner.bandcamp.com/album/totem-and-taboo-recitative-after-freud-popcycle-29
Requiem
https://dickturner.bandcamp.com/album/requiem
Rock Opera Fandy Rant
https://dickturner.bandcamp.com/album/the-incredible-history-of-fandy-rant-his-tragic-rise-fall-popcycle-30
Early Classical Music and Electronic Music
https://dickturner.bandcamp.com/album/classical-music-selection-1
Music from the film La Grosse Commission
https://dickturner.bandcamp.com/album/film-music-from-la-grosse-commission

Actualité
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Projects
Discover and be part of the project of Dick Turner

The pieces on this disc are the illustration of the ideas I expressed in my biography in a physical, that is, a sonic form.

Here are the salient features of the works proposed.

VARIATION is the key to all

The scales used are the so-called synthetic scales cataloged by Messiaen. These scales are composed of alternating M2 and m2 seconds. These scales have interesting properties. The key to them is that they have no fixed identity. This means a composer is free to approach them by any number of different optics.

I will illustrate a few of the aspects of what I call their Variable Identities.

First, they are symmetrical, the implications of this are important. They have no beginning, nor do they have an end. That is, any note in the scale may serve as the start, any note may serve as the end of the scale.

Next, they can be seen through the optic of any of the intervals. This means that the chords which can be constructed using these scales may or may not have relations to traditional tonal chords but that the progressions between these chords have another logic to them. Thus, the materials of Desperate Measures and the ballet BLOW-OUT! are identical but with completely different results.

The point is: These scales can sound like whatever you want them to sound. They are a sort of image of freedom.

The next important aspect of the music proposed is the constant shift between musical ideas, musical realities, but within a familiar context. The musical ideas presented in these pieces do not try to sound innovative whatsoever, on the contrary they are specifically composed to have a familiar sound to them. It is exactly this familiarity which the composer uses to communicate with the listener.

The ensembles for which these pieces were written are also, with the exception of Parenthèse (solo piano) and The Vigil of Venus (voice, piano, flute), atypical. They purposely combine instruments commonly associated with rock, jazz, and classical music. This was a conscious decision done in accordance with the variable aspect of the scales, chords, and the material in general. Thus, the violoncello is found next to the electric guitar which is found next to the alto saxophone. Yet the composer has worked to give these atypical ensembles their own reality.

The vision herein exposed is again one of Variation, of variable identities, of choice and freedom. This music mixes the known with the unknown, the familiar with the unfamiliar. This concept of variable Identity runs throughout the entire disc. It is, for the composer, the key to freedom, that is working with the situation at hand but having the choice to change one's perspective when the situation changes.

Website

https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfV3Qmocipiu6JeUOJ-fnzXB4d_QK08Lo

 

Videos
Videos Galleries

Look at the galleries here under to display videos of Dick Turner :
 

Video - Dick Turner - Blow Out!

 


Video - Dick Turner: Totem and Taboo

This is a video made by a friend on her phone of my concert at Le Générateur, a performance space just outside of Paris in Gentilly

 


Video - Suite pour Violoncelle amplifié,

Filmé lors du concert du 26 janvier 2019 à la Cité International Arts, Paris. Il y a 4 mouvements:1) 0:002) 5:303) 11:004) 13:03 - Aurore Daniel, Violoncelle

 


Video - I never had a puppy

A tragic & somewhat philosophical/psychological song about a man who never had a puppy as a child and the ensuing tragic consequences on his subsequent earthly existence… composed & performed by Dick Turner

 


Video - Duet for Trombone and Tenor Saxophone

Dick TurnerDuet for Trombone and Tenor SaxophoneIn 4 MovementsOlivier Miqueu, tromboneGilles Wolff, tenor saxophonerecorded 16 April 2019MOP Studios

 


Video - Piano Sonata #2, Paint It Black

This is a studio recording of my Piano Sonata # 2 subtitled "Paint It Black" (so-called because I quote that theme before the third movement).

 


Video - Hold Me by Dick Turner starring Blaze Starr

Film by Irving Claw re-edited Words/Music by Dick Turner Hold Me I want you to hold me Like the world was gonna end I want you to hold me Like I was your only friend I want you to hold me ...

 


Photos

Look at the galleries here under to diplay photos of Dick Turner :
 

Gallery 1 - Photos de Dick Turner

Galerie de photos de Dick Turner

 


Prods
Prods of the Project

Here is the list of Prods being part of the Project : Dick Turner.

 
fumie & daniel

100.00 €
fumie & daniel

paaldu

20.00 €
paaldu

lsal67

10.00 €
lsal67

 
pascal

10.00 €
pascal

   


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Bet on Dick Turner

Use the following form in order to bet on Dick Turner. You must first be registered as Prod to bet on an Artist.
The first Cursor is the current Phase, the second represents the entire Project:


 

140.00 € / 31 204.80 €
 

4  4 Prod(s) Detail
140.00 € / 35 716.25 €



 

Music - Dick Turner

Music part of the project of Dick Turner are:

1

Parenthèse - 4:01

 

2

Soft Fiasco - 3:34

 

3

Tempus Fugit - 2:54

 

4

Vicious Circle - 3:17

 


 

Last Stakes for Dick Turner

The last stakes of our Prods : Dick Turner :

20 €

by paaldu
for Dick Turner
37 month(s) ago for Production Album

100 €

by fumie & daniel
for Dick Turner
37 month(s) ago for Production Album

10 €

by lsal67
for Dick Turner
37 month(s) ago for Production Album

10 €

by pascal
for Dick Turner
38 month(s) ago for Production Album



 

Advantages / Counterparties Prods

Each Prod of Dick Turner 's project will receive (in addition to 70% of the net revenue pro rata to his participation in the project) based on his investment the following cumulative benefits and counterparts :

20 €

A password to download a digital version of Dick's Album

30 €

+ The Cd of Dick Turner's project

50 €

+ An original drawing by the composer

100 €

+ Right to buy 1 or more albums at a special price

500 €

+ A “Cubist Postcard” by the composer

1000 €

+ Original Smile Machine (invention hand made by the composer)

Sponsors Information

Zelabel, Sphere Studio, Tremplin de nuit et Lgsr sont des marques commerciales appartenant à la société Sphere France sarl.

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