Gary Noland grew up on a plot of land three blocks south of UC Berkeley known as People’s Park, which has distinguished itself as a site of civic unrest since the 1960s. As an adolescent, Gary lived for a time in Salzburg and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he absorbed many musical influences. He earned a BA in music from UC Berkeley in 1979, continued studies at the Boston Conservatory, and transferred to Harvard where he added to his credits an MA and PhD in 1989. His teachers in composition and theory have included John C. Adams, Alan Curtis, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, William Denny, Robert Dickow, Janice Giteck, Andrew Imbrie, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner, David Lewin, Donald Martino, Hugo Norden, Marta Ptaszynska, Chris Rozé, Goodwin Sammel, John Swackhamer, Ivan Tcherepnin, and Walter Winslow. He has attended seminars by composers David Del Tredici, Beverly Grigsby, Michael Finnissy and Bernard Rands, and has had private consultations with George Rochberg and Joaquin Nin-Culmell. Gary’s catalogue consists of over 400 works, which include piano, vocal, chamber, experimental and electronic pieces, full-length plays in verse, fiction, and graphically notated scores. His compositions have been performed and broadcast in many locations throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, and Australia. He founded the Seventh Species concert series in San Francisco in 1990 and has, since, produced over 50 concerts of contemporary concert hall music on the West Coast. Gary is also a founding member of Cascadia Composers. Gary has taught music at Harvard and the University of Oregon and currently teaches piano, theory, and composition as an independent instructor in Portland, Oregon. Six CDs of his compositions are available on North Pacific Music at: www.northpacificmusic.com.