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Dirk Johan Stromberg is an American musician. His passions in music are inspired by a nomadic lifestyle that began at birth. Having grown up in Europe (Great Britain, Switzerland and The Netherlands) music as a common language of expression is a strong theme in his music. Later, having lived in Texas and New York City, the vast cultural divide and the intolerable similarities between Europe and the United States along with the book Tropendrift he was driven to South East Asia, which has had a profound influence on his music and philosophy.
His musical influences come from classical, jazz, improvised, pop, music of South Asia, the Far East and the avant-guard. Being interested in the spontaneity and intimacy in performance, his compositional style, performance and research are based on combinations of exploring sound pallets of acoustic instruments and their integrations with technology through the use of artificial intelligence and re-synthesis techniques in reactive, semi-improvised and aleatoric performances.
Dirk’s music has been performed in Europe and the United States including; Bucharest, Istanbul, Amsterdam and New York City and his music has been programmed on several radio stations throughout the United States along with several online radio communities. His music appears on several compilations and a two CD set of Dirk’s composition Tropendrift released by In de Knipscheer based on the poetry of Dutch poet Albert Hagenaars.
He has been a composer in residence at STEIM (Studio for Electronic Instrumental Music) and has received recognition for his work from ISAM (Institute for Study in American Music) and MATA (Music At The Anthology).
Dirk Stromberg also works as a production consultant in music and performer and has produced several CDs and DVD's of electro-acoustic and acoustic music and performs regularly internationally.
Dirk Johan Stromberg has dedicated his work to music that is founded in the live performance experience, a passion that stems from his work as an improviser. His compositions delve not only into aspects of improvisation and chance but also deal with reactive performance, real-time composition and the implementation of technology in acoustic music. His interests in reactive performance and real-time composition have manifested themselves in the creation of intelligent computer programs and alternate notation systems as well as the formation of the group Lente, which has allowed for collaborations that have helped cultivate these ideas. Dirk further implements technology to deal with sound in space in such a way that sound diffusion becomes an intricate performance element and further making a performance a separate experience from a recording.
Noise, and balancing it both sonically and formally, is the primary acoustic element that Dirk concerns himself with. The composer's fascination with acoustic instruments as well as technology has led to his pursuit of trying to integrate the two and hence works mostly with live sampling and re-synthesis. His approach to re-synthesis allows the composer to blur the line between what is part of the acoustic performance and what is computer aided/generated sound.
Exploring the nature of sound and its perception has led Dirk to explore his own instrument the guitar. Often making the guitar sound more like a gamelan orchestra rather than a guitar through acoustic manipulation. In recent years his work with prepared guitar, influenced by the works of John Cage, has been a main focus in his improvised music. As well as being a jazz guitarist his work as an improvisor has led to a solo career as well as currently playing with Islak Kopek, the first electro-acoustic free improvisation ensemble in Turkey, whose debut album, also engineered by Dirk, will be released in the fall of 2006.
