About Me
Dr. Timothy Polashek
Timothy Polashek writes in a variety of media and styles, including vocal, instrumental, electro-acoustic music, text/sound compositions, and interactive performance systems. His music has been performed in Hong Kong, Brazil, Moscow, and other European countries, including international festivals such as the International Computer Music Conference, International Intermedia Festival, and the Icelandic Festival of Electronic Arts. His work can be found on Wood and Wire, published by Albany Records, and Electric Music Collective albums Incandescence and Defiant. His research projects in audio synthesis and text/sound music are published in the Journal of the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music of the United States and the Leonardo Music Journal, published by MIT Press. Interactive and computer music by Dr. Polashek is referenced and discussed in The Oxford History of Western Music encyclopedia published by Oxford University Press.
Raised in Iowa and Wisconsin, Tim has lived with moderate hearing loss since birth and wears hearing aids every day. This hearing loss has become part of Tim’s musical and compositional aesthetic, prompting him to explore the world of nonsensical speech sounds as music, as well as pitch and timbre manipulations of other sounds in his electro-acoustic works. He wrote his first computer program in 5th grade to generate time-based graphic animations and, by the time he reached high school, he had written a computer program in PASCAL that could synthesize musical tones, generate improvisations in the style of jazz blues, and display them as musical notation in real-time during the computation and rendering of the music. Ever since these early experiences, he continues to apply computers and music technologies to create compositions and other musical projects with aesthetics derived from his unique listening perspective.
Tim is also a passionate teacher and serves Coordinator of the Music Technology Studies and Professor of Music at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky and the former chairman of the Audio Engineering Program at Gibbs College - NJ and Lehman College of the City University of New York. In the spring of 2011, he was a Visiting Professor of Music Composition at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, where he taught in the doctoral program in computer music. He also directs the annual Studio 300 Festival of Digital Art and Music at Transylvania University. He has recently debuted works at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall and Symphony Space, the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, the SPARK New Music Festival, the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, and International Computer Music Conference Festivals. The renowned new music ensemble, Speculum Musicae, has performed his music.
Tim received his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition degree from Columbia University, an M.A. in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College, and B.A. in Music with Honors from Grinnell College. He has studied composition and music theory with Jon Appleton, Jonathan Chenette, Charles Dodge, Joseph Dubiel, Brad Garton, Jonathan Kramer, Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail, and Larry Polansky.
Listen and Watch to Micro-Coastings!
Echoes of Steel: Electro-Acoustic Music for Drum Set!
Performed by Dr. Brad Meyer
