Noah Flynn Kaplan (born September 11, 1984), known professionally as Noah K, is an American composer, saxophonist, and record producer.
Early life and education
K grew up in Topanga Canyon, California. During high school he performed jazz professionally throughout Los Angeles.[1] In 2002, he composed and performed music on the ABC television series Once and Again.[2] He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Joe Maneri and Jerry Bergonzi.[3] He was Maneri's last student.[4][5] After graduating, K moved to Brooklyn, New York, and traveled monthly to Framingham, Massachusetts for lessons in composition, theory, and improvisation with Maneri until Maneri's death in 2009.[4] K received an MFA in Music Composition from Princeton University[6] in 2015 where his advisor was Steven Mackey.[7] In 2018 he was awarded the Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship from the Princeton University Graduate School.[8] He has been the recipient of composition fellowships from the Tanglewood Music Center[9] and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.[10] In 2022, he received a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University.[11] He has been visiting professor of music and adjunct professor at NYU's Gallatin School, where he co-founded the 4th Wave Music Intensive.[12]
Career
Dollshot
K co-leads the dream pop band Dollshot for which he writes music and performs.[13][14] The band's eponymous debut album was released in 2011 and includes arrangements of songs by Arnold Schoenberg, Francis Poulenc and Charles Ives[15] as well as original songs by Noah K and Wes Matthews.[16] A music video for their song "Lalande", directed by Matt Mahurin, premiered on WNYC's Soundcheck in July 2017.[13] A video for a second single, "Swan Gone", directed by Pablo Delcan, premiered on BlackBook in October 2018.[14] In December 2018, Dollshot performed three songs from Lalande live on WNYC and were interviewed by Soundcheck host John Schaefer.[17]
With Giacomo Merega
One of the musicians on Dollshot is bass guitarist Giacomo Merega, whom Noah K met when they were students in Boston.[18] Their first recording, The Light and Other Things, was made in 2006; the band was a free improvisation trio that included David Tronzo on guitar.[18] The pair also played on Watch the Walls Instead, another set of freely improvised performances, this time in trio, quartet, and quintet formats.[18] They both played on trumpeter Joe Moffett's Ad Faunum[18] and were co-leaders with Moffett on Crows and Motives, a set of improvised pieces that "arose between recording three-voice extracts from one of Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez's settings of L'homme armé."[19]
Noah Kaplan Quartet
Merega is a member of the Noah Kaplan Quartet. Their debut album Descendants was released by Hathut in 2011.[20] It was followed by Cluster Swerve in 2017,[21] and Out of the Hole in 2020.[22] In its four-star review of the album, DownBeat magazine stated, "From track to track there is a consistent sense of rumination, where every intervallic brushstroke feels like the work of a painter meticulously applying and manipulating his medium to the canvas."[23] K has recorded or performed with Joe Morris, Anthony Coleman, Mauro Pagani, Peter Erskine, Alan Pasqua, Rinde Eckert, Jason Nazary, Mike Pride, Tyshawn Sorey, Mat Maneri, and Joe Maneri.[9]
Collaboration with Hampton Fancher
K began working with writer Hampton Fancher in 2010 when they collaborated on the spoken word cantata Rat Lunch.[24] In 2016 they began collaborating on an opera, Salvation, for which Fancher wrote the story and libretto.[24] The DVD of Michael Almereyda's documentary of Fancher, Escapes (2017), includes a video portrait of Fancher shot by K.[25]
Other
K is the editor of the English edition of Ivan Wyschnegradsky's Manual of Quarter-Tone Harmony.[26] He is a co-founder of Underwolf Records and works as a record producer for the label.[27]
Playing style
As a member of his quartet, he has played in a style influenced by the microtonal approach of Maneri.[28]The New York City Jazz Record reviewer of their first album described his playing: "Kaplan's shifting pitches give his flowing lines, sliding across and between notes, even more vocal inflections than a regular hornman might impart, but he tends to be less speech-like in his phrasing and more likely to evoke animal similes in his flexible expressiveness, ranging from pained braying to exuberant crows."[29] More generally, as an improviser, he "is devoted to quarter-tone improvisation and its integration into his music as a structural principle", wrote The New York City Jazz Record.[19]
^ abManeri, Sonja (2010). Love Notes and Love Lines: My Life with Joe Maneri. Cambridge, Massachusetts. p. 125. OCLC712651055.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^"Rat Lunch". underwolf.com. Retrieved December 31, 2018.
^Dollshot. Rosalie Kaplan, voix ; Noah Kaplan, saxophone ; Wes Matthews, piano ; Giacomo Merega, basse. Brooklyn, New York: Underwolf Records. 2011. OCLC991171591.{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
