"Vivian Perlis, founder and former director of the Oral History of American Music, was our country’s preeminent oral historian of American classical music, documenting through interviews dozens and do
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zens of exceptional American composers. From the very start, there was no one in her class: a trailblazing woman who in the late 1960s had the insight to create the first oral history of an American composer. What she built is permanent and extraordinary and unique. When I was asked to write a piece portraying Vivian, it immediately became clear to me that this was a wonderful opportunity to create a work that highlighted many details of her life. As an American composer familiar with her contribution and with my own identity deeply rooted in American music, I saw writing this piece as an opportunity of a lifetime. It is my hope we can both deeply enjoy and also learn much about Vivian Perlis from “There Was Only One of Her.”" - Dean Rosenthal
Based on interviews with and by Vivian Perlis
Dean Rosenthal, composer
Lily Weisberg, video
Dean Rosenthal (1974) is an American composer of contemporary and experimental music, field recordings, digital pastiche, sound collage, and installations; performer, writer on music, and theorist. His instrumental music has been described as "thorny" and "modernist" (The New Yorker). His works are performed, broadcast, choreographed, and installed internationally, primarily in North America and Europe at venues such as Brooklyn Museum, Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale, Spectrum, Ohrenhoch der Geräuschladen, The Wulf, Electronic Music Foundation, Incubator Arts Project, Symphony Space, at many universities and art schools. He has worked closely with Guggenheim Fellow David Parker's dance company The Bang Group, utilizing contemporary dance to express his instrumental music; this music was heard in dozens of performances from the Brooklyn Museum to hallowed dance center Jacob's Pillow to the Claquettes Club in Belgium. His prose score, Stones/Water/Time/Breath, is regularly performed outdoors in situ, and in 2016 was given a 10 city, 3 country performance as part of the international Make Music Day festival, inaugurating an annual event now in its 5th year. Recordings of performances of this piece were released by Edition Wandelweiser Records in 2020. www.deanrosenthal.org
