A long time resident of New Jersey, David Beardsley is one of the New York area's foremost microtonal guitarists. Meditative and mesmerizing, his playing is steeped in Indian music and blues as much as it is the late 20th century minimalist tradition. Playing microtonal Just Intonation guitar and steel guitar, David creates droning ambient soundscapes. His string quartet "as beautiful as a crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring evening" was released as an audio only DVD
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A long time resident of New Jersey, David Beardsley is one of the New York area's foremost microtonal guitarists. Meditative and mesmerizing, his playing is steeped in Indian music and blues as much as it is the late 20th century minimalist tradition. Playing microtonal Just Intonation guitar and steel guitar, David creates droning ambient soundscapes. His string quartet "as beautiful as a crescent of a new moon on a cloudless spring evening" was released as an audio only DVD, For Feldman (OgreOgress) July 2006 as part of a tribute to 20th century composer Morton Feldman. He started piano at a young age, but later moved on guitar as a teenager and started composing seriously in his thirties. Along the way, he developed a strong interest in the tuning system known as just intonation - tuning by whole number ratios from the harmonic series. David has studied North Indian Classical Music with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Michael Harrison. He has also attended workshops with Dean Drummond (co-leader of Newband, director of the Harry Partch Instrumentarium) and David Hykes (Harmonic Chant aka overtone singing). Performances include the American Festival of Microtonal Music, Chashama, Chez Bushwick, Judson Memorial Church, the Knitting Factory, Microfest (a Southern California Festival of Microtonal Music), the Music Annex at the University of Pennsylvania, musiXplore (NJ), New York University, Psychotron (NYC), Pianos (NYC), Tibet House, the Trenton Avant Garde Festival and the World Out of Tune Festival. Recent collaborations have involved dancer Claire Barratt of Cilla Vee Movement Projects, cellist Loren Dempster, violinist Christina Fong, guitarist James Ross, cosmic zitherist Alex Carpenter, and dancer Jeremy Wade. He has been fortunate to participate in performances of Evolution For Electric Guitar And Orchestra by Jon Catler (2002) and The Voice of the Bowed Guitar by Rod Poole (2007).
