Dave Soldier is a composer and performer in New York. Some of his work is based on unusual collaborations. For the Thai Elephant Orchestra he built giant musical instruments on which he trained a group of elephants to improvise. He created musical instruments played by zebra finches and pygmy chimpanzees. ...show more

Dave Soldier is a composer and performer in New York. Some of his work is based on unusual collaborations. For the Thai Elephant Orchestra he built giant musical instruments on which he trained a group of elephants to improvise. He created musical instruments played by zebra finches and pygmy chimpanzees.

He coached children to compose including The Tangerine Awkestra (2-10 year old Brooklyn schoolchildren playing free jazz), Da HipHop Raskalz (5-10 year old children in East Harlem who write and perform rap and dub), and Yol K'u (Mayan Indian children in San Mateo Ixtatan, Guatemala) who compose on giant marimbas. In The People's Choice Music, he worked with Russian conceptual artists to poll people on their musical taste, creating "The Most Wanted" and "Most Unwanted Music". A new group of pieces uses brainwave activity for non-musicians to compose without effort. Not all of his work is so totally off-the-wall, however; he founded and played violin in the seminal punk chamber group, the Soldier String Quartet, in 1985, pioneering the use of amplified instruments and a repertoire that erased boundaries between classical and popular music.

He founded the Delta punk group, the Kropotkins, and has a large repertoire of new classical / chamber music. As leader of the Soldier String Quartet, Soldier wrote and/or performed traditionally notated pieces that draw upon every possible music style, from serialism to Delta blues. Soldier had an affinity for the polyphony evident in the Haydn and Beethoven quartets. He aimed to highlight the anachronism that stemmed from having a classical ensemble play in contemporary popular idioms, particularly rhythm and blues and punk rock. ...show less