Stephen Rush

Stephen Rush is the director of the Digital Music Ensemble (DME). With DME, Rush has premiered works by John Cage, Philip Glass, and LaMonte Young, and has recorded with Pauline Oliveros and "Blue" Gene Tyranny. DME is widely known for its site-specific work, "Gypsy Pond Music", which is performed annually at the University of Michigan and elsewhere. He is also a music director in the Department of Dance and teaches classes in music composition, music theory, and jazz.
Rush's extensive body of work includes four operas, chamber music (some of which is standard repertory), orchestra work and over 100 scores for dancers. His compositions have been recorded and performed worldwide by the Warsaw and Detroit Symphonies and members of the New York Philharmonic and others. As a performer, Rush has presented his multi-media work in Japan, Europe (including Paris, Berlin, and Budapest), Latin America, and India.
Stephen Rush works frequently as a jazz musician, performing with Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, the late Peter Kowald, and his own New York-based-trio Yuganaut, with Tom Abbs and Geoff Mann. His new book, Better Get It In Your Soul, discusses radical approaches to liturgy, including a chapter on the Theory of Harmolodics (in direct consultation with Ornette Coleman). He also has a side-career as an interviewer, having talked with such luminaries as Laurie Anderson, Ravi Shankar, LaMonte Young, Desmond Tutu, the Kronos Quartet, and Swami Chinmayananda.
Rush is a professor at the University of Michigan, where he has taught for 24 years. He earned a doctorate at the Eastman School of Music and studied with third-stream pioneer Gunther Schuller, David Liptak, Allan Schindler, and Samuel Adler.