Arts on the Edge Wolfeboro August 10, 2009

Toby Twining Music - Vox out of the Box: New Music for Instruments and Voices
Raised in Texas, with family roots in country-swing
and gospel, Toby Twining has traveled musically from playing for rock and jazz bands to experimental composition at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned his Bachelor of Musical Composition degree in 1985. In the mid-eighties he became intrigued by the vast potential of the human voice and delved into a broad spectrum of repertoires and techniques, including Renaissance
madrigals, scat, African yodeling, and Tuvan throat-singing. The discovery of his own vocal range and performance talents pulled these influences together for Twining and guided him toward an emphasis on composition for a cappella ensembles.

Twining moved to New York in 1987, initially writing for modern dance choreographers who wanted the sounds of a new choral music. In 1990, with a group of five New York-based singers, he presented the first international live concert of his music at the Munye Theater in Seoul, South Korea. A year later he formed the a cappella quartet Toby Twining Music, which sang in music halls and festivals across the United States and in Europe. The group recorded Shaman (BMG Classics, 1994), which Stereo Review hailed as “a bel canto for our time” and one of the best releases of 1994. The ensemble grew to twelve voices in 1999 to premiere Chrysalid Requiem at the Concertgebouw’s Kleine Zaal (Cantaloupe Music, 2002). 

In addition to vocal music, Twining has written for keyboard and other instruments. Two of his best-known piano pieces, Satie Blues and Nightmare Rag, were recorded by avant-garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan on her 1997 album Art of the Toy Piano (Uni/Point) and have received considerable exposure through concerts, radio, indie film, and television. In 2006 the American Music Center chose his 9:11 Blues, composed for cellist Matt Haimovitz (Oxingale/Artemis, 2002), for the IAMIC conference in Stockholm. Twining’s recent incidental music for Eurydice received a 2008 Barrymore Award and is due for commercial release in 2010.

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