Date of Birth: 
About Kenneth Atchley
- Kenneth Atchley (born 1954) is an American composer, noise, drone, and video artist, and a member of the San Francisco Bay Area electronic music community. Atchley uses temporary water fountains as sound-sources and uses analogue electronic instruments and laptops to create his works.
- Other important factors in his art include sculptures, and environmental and metaphorical elements.
- Atchley's music and live performances have been featured at various venues and festivals including The Kitchen, Bang on a Can, and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.In September 1982, Atchley took part in a joint concert called the Rota-League Concert when the League of Automated Music Composers joined forces with an electronic-music band called The Rotary Club.Atchley worked with choreographer Roseanne Spradlin in 2003 to create Rearrangement (or a Spell for Mortals) as a duet for Walter Dundervill and Athena Malloy.
- According to the New York Times, the piece "sounds like running water" and "the dancers explore issues of mortality in an appropriately enigmatic setting".In winter 2006-2007 he composed a set of works for strings.
- The pieces, collectively titled 7 stillnesses, exploit a range of avant-garde harmonic progressions with emphasis on passages in which a chord is held long enough that its value within the harmonic progression disappears.
- The title refers not to a determinable number of "stillnesses"; more to the mythic use of number to refer to subjective experiences of stillness and quietude.
- The writing extends techniques that Atchley developed in his electronic work.
- In this composition the combined harmonics of an ensemble of string instruments create pared down, absorbing, tonal sound-planes. In 2009, Atchley performed concert versions of turtle.
- The primary sound of this work is generated by six sine wave tones in the frequency range from 261.63 Hz and 440.00 Hz.
- Attending video landscapes are generated by defining and displaying sets of points within a single, germinal image. Atchley has released several CDs of solo, electro-acoustic-noise works including fountains (published by Auscultare Research).
- He has also worked closely with other artists to create joint projects such as Sealed Cantus with John Bischoff (released on Bischoff's 23Five CD Aperture).
- He has also written an opera called Edison's Last Project(ION) and choral works including Lumiere de Main.
- The libretto and lyrics of these were published in the book Guests go in to Supper.
Read more at Wikipedia