die Reihe

Jack Callahan is a composer and sound engineer based in New York City. He graduated from
Hampshire College in 2012 with a BA in Music Composition & Theory. In 2011 he studied privately with Ju rg Frey
in Aarau, CH. His music has been performed and recorded by ensembles such as the SEM Ensemble, the Wet Ink
Ensemble, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra & the Dog Star Orchestra in such cities as New York, Los Angeles,
Amsterdam and Zu rich. Since 2013 he has been making mostly electronic works under the moniker "die Reihe" -
taken from the journal of the same name edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen - focusing on clinical
deconstruction of contemporary music tropes such as Trap and House music. With this project he has toured the
both the U.S. and Europe multiple times, been invited to many festivals and has released music with labels such as
Anomia, Ascetic House and Salon. In 2014 he founded Banh Mi Verlag, an imprint dedicated to contemporary
experimental music and culture. As a sound engineer he has toured consistently with Thurston Moore and his
projects since 2012 and has done numerous tours with him on no fewer than four continents.

> My work deals with the simplicity of material and form, using the bare minimum of “creative”
> intervention on raw materials to achieve complex results. To paraphrase my teacher Jürg Frey, “the artist's hand is
> very light.” In my work that has often meant the use of silence and repetition, especially in my music written for
> ensembles or individuals.
>
> In the past few years my interest in dance music has intersected with my formal concerns. Lately this entails
> working with tropes of dance music and “sampling,” either in the traditional sense of directly as audio or as
> transcription, and the presentation of whatever form the “samples” take as dryly as possible, often simply as lists,
> one after the other.
>
> In whatever way these formal concerns manifest, my work is about uncluttering, both in the work itself – the
> composition – and the experience of the work. By using a minimum of material and organizational means I hope to
> achieve a directness – here it is, what you hear is what it is and nothing more.