Jason Eckardt played guitar in jazz and metal bands until, upon first hearing the music of Webern, he immediately devoted himself to composition. Since then, his music has been influenced by his interests in perceptual complexity, the physical and psychological dimensions of performance, political activism, and the natural world.
He has been recognized through commissions from Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations, Chamber Music America, New Music USA, the Guggenheim Museum, Meet the Composer, and the Oberlin Conservatory and awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Eckardt's music is recorded on three portrait albums on the Mode and Tzadik labels and appears on several compilations. He teaches composition at City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Brooklyn College and lives in the Catskill Mountains.
Portrait by Tina Psoinos
