Todd Lerew

Todd Lerew is a Los Angeles-based artist and composer working
with invented acoustic instruments, repurposed found objects, and unique
preparations of traditional instruments. Much of his work deals with
the physical properties of sound and the nature of perception, exploring
the use of sound as a plastic medium, and revisiting relationships
within a performance environment. Other works examine the effect of
isolated elements of indeterminism within mostly-closed systems, and the
generation of musical material by deviation from an impossible given
task.

Lerew is the inventor of the Quartz Cantabile, which utilizes a
principle of thermoacoustics to convert heat into sound, and has
presented the instrument at Stanford’s CCRMA, Georgia Tech, the American
Musical Instrument Society annual conference, and Machine Project in
Los Angeles. He is the founder and curator of Telephone Music, a
collaborative music and memory project based on the children’s game of
Telephone, the last round of which was released as an exclusive download
to subscribers of music magazine The Wire. He has received
commissions from So Percussion (New York) and the Now Hear Ensemble
(Santa Barbara), in addition to performances by members of the San
Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Wet Ink Ensemble (New York), and the
Canticum Ostrava choir (Czech Republic).

Photo: Nedda Atassi.