DAVID TOOP
DAVID TOOP is a musician, composer, writer, curator. Studied art and design, worked as Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at London College of Communication, currently Emeritus Professor. For more than fifty-five years he has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials.
This encompasses improvised music performance (engaging with natural processes and materials including bone conduction, resonators and buzzers, strings, paper, magnetism, archival memories, flutes, electricity and other materials), writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. It includes nine acclaimed books, including Rap Attack (1984), Ocean of Sound (1995), Sinister Resonance (2010), Into the Maelstrom (2016), Flutter Echo, a memoir first published in Japan in 2017 (2019) and Inflamed Invisible: Writing On Art and Sound 1976-2018 (2019). Briefly a member of David Cunningham’s pop project The Flying Lizards in 1979, he has released fourteen solo albums, from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Sound Body on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label (2006) to Entities Inertias Faint Beings (2016) and Apparition Paintings (2021) on ROOM40.
His 1978 Amazonas recordings of Yanomami shamanism and ritual were released on Sub Rosa as Lost Shadows (2016). From the beginning of his career he has collaborated with artists from many different fields, including sound poet Bob Cobbing, butoh dancers Mitsutaka Ishii and Min Tanaka, artist Marie Yates, contemporary dancer Miranda Tufnel and theatre director/actor Stephen Berkoff. In recent years his collaborations include Rie Nakajima, Akio Suzuki, Tania Caroline Chen, John Butcher, Ken Ikeda, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Sharon Gal, Camille Norment, Sidsel Endresen, Alasdair Roberts, Lucie Stepankova, Lawrence English, Fred Frith, Thurston Moore, Ryuichi Sakamoto and a revived Alterations, the iconoclastic improvising quartet with Steve Beresford, Peter Cusack and Terry Day first formed in 1977.
Curator of sound art exhibitions including Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery (2000), his opera – Star-shaped Biscuit – was performed as an Aldeburgh Faster Than Sound project in 2012. His first participation in improvisation workshops was in classes given by drummer John Stevens at Ealing College in 1971-72. As a workshop leader he taught improvisation classes at London College of Communication between 2005-2019. He has also directed workshops in Singapore, Tokyo, Madrid, Porto Alegre (Brazil), Stockholm and many other locations.
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