duane pitre - trome records

Photo by Lauren Cecil
Performing Microtonal Guitars & Mallets at the ISSUE Project Room
3rd May 2008

Photo by Dan Cohoon
Performing Motorized Music for Electric Guitar at Brickbat Books
27th July 2008

Duane Pitre

Duane Pitre is a minimalist composer/sound-artist originally from San Diego, and currently based in New York, USA.
A former member of the band The Camera Obscura, and previously recording under the name Pilotram, Duane Pitre's solo output has centred around minimal compositions, long form drone-works and microtonal experiments. Despite the diversity of his method, the salient characteristic of Pitre's work is his deliberation around infinitesimal details to create a vast expansive sound.

Artist Biography:

Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer, performer, and improviser. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two.
In summer 2007, Pitre's album, Organized Pitches Occurring in Time, was released on Important Records (CD) and Trome Records (vinyl). This album consists of two versions of his lengthy "slow-motion chamber music" composition Ensemble Drones (2005/2008). Ensemble Drones was premiered live in December 2007 by a 13-piece ensemble in Burlington, VT, and future performances of the piece are planned for London, Paris, Bristol, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, and New Orleans.

Summer 2008 marked the completion of Pitre's second large work for ensemble, titled Origin. The piece is a "modular composition" in that each of the work's movements (modules), all roughly the same duration, is movable and can be arranged in numerous sequence variations. Origin is scored for bowed "harmonic-guitars," which are modified and unconventionally strung electric guitars (utilizing multi-unisons) tuned to intervals corresponding with the Harmonic Series, a.k.a. Just Intonation.

Pitre has a number of releases scheduled for 2008, including a track on a compilation of experimental/avant-garde guitarists, which will also feature work by Keith Rowe (AMM), Tetuzi Akiyama, Sebastien Roux, and others. He is currently curating—and will be contributing a track to—a Just Intonation compilation that will be released on Important Records in early 2009. The compilation will include work by artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, and Arnold Dreyblatt.

Pitre has toured the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Japan with past groups, and under his own name he has performed in San Diego, Los Angeles, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Washington DC, Burlington, Philadelphia, and NYC (at venues such as Issue Project Room, ABC No Rio, St. Marks Church's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, The Knitting Factory, and Galapagos). Pitre has ensemble shows planned for a fall 2008 European tour, during which he will perform in London, Bristol, and Paris.

Trome Releases:

trome oo1 'Organized Pitches Occurring In Time' LP

Artist Links: