JONATHAN BESSER
Composer/Pianist Jonathan Besser was born in New York City in 1949, and studied composition in New York at the Mannes College of Music with David Loeb. Resident in New Zealand since 1974, based mainly in Wellington. He has created acoustic and electronic music in collaboration with leading writers, choreographers, musicians, artists and film makers, including Gaylene Preston, Mary Jane O’Reilly, Warwick Broadhead, Keri Hulme, Ross Harris, Michael Parmenter, Philip Mann and Allen Brunton, Don McGlashan, Billy Apple and Australian author Roger McDonald. He has composed original music for many film, radio, stage and T.V. productions.
His commissions include the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, the Wellington Sinfonia, and the New Zealand String Quartet (touring schools with them in 1994). He is leader of his own New Music groups most notably the ‘Besser Ensemble’ (1987-1997) touring schools throughout N.Z. with major support from Creative NZ as well as making numerous recordings. He is also founding member of Free Radicals (electronic music) and Triphonics, touring China with Triphonics in March 1996. In 1997 he performed at the WOMAD festival (Auckland), and he had his orchestral piece No Riff premiered by the Wellington Symphonia. In June 1997 he collaborated with Warwick Broadhead on a huge movement music theatre spectacle at Downstage theatre ‘The life and Times of Constance Flux’.
In 1998, Besser travelled to New Caledonia to produce original film music for the new Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in Noumea and in the 1998 Wellington International Arts Festival he performed solo (piano) nightly at the Dans Paleis. He is currently living in Auckland where he was 1998 composer-in-residence with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and director of the New Romantics. His latest new performance group ‘Bravura’ are performing around Australia and New Zealand. He was a finalist in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Music 2000 Prize and composer for Mary Jane O’Reilly’s ‘Te Rangi Marie’ Millennium dawn event collaborating with Waihirere Kapa Haka group.
In 2012 Jonathan toured New Zealand with his group Gimel, performing his Gimel Suite, a work composed especially for the group. Jonathan's group The Zestniks performed in 2015 as part of the Auckland Jazz Festival, which included some of his original compositions.
Besser began adding screen compositions to his CV in the 90s. He has composed extensively for documentary maker Shirley Horrocks, been award-nominated for 1995 documentary feature War Stories, and won a TV Guide Television Award for documentary A Cat Among the Pigeons. From 2015-2017 , Besser composed for 3 News' World War One short documentary series, Great War Stories.
In 2006, Jonathan Besser and Steve Garden released the album Turn (Rattle), seeking to create a sound that was very ‘open’ in its structural architecture and sonic textures. While the pieces on Turn were designed to sound composed, they offered enormous scope for collective improvisation. The group recorded each piece just moments after seeing the scores for the first time, encouraging a greater degree of spontaneity.
Besser’s album Campursari via Rattle Records in 2011, was inspired by the meditative beauty of Javanese gamelan. While Jonathan has worked frequently with gamelan, this is the first time he wrote specifically for them, rather than using them in improvisational settings.
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