Discipline: Music Composition

Kevin Norton

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: Leonia, NJ
MacDowell Fellowships: 2002
More: www.kevinnorton.com
Kevin Norton is an American percussionist and composer active in the New York City jazz and contemporary music scenes. After school he began getting involved with the downtown New York City scene, and began working with Fred Frith's experimental rock band Keep the Dog (which also featured saxophonist John Zorn and harpist Zeena Parkins). Some other collaborators during this period include Phillip Johnston and Joel Forrester. Beginning in 1998, Norton is currently teaching at William Paterson University. He began the Barking Hoop label in 1999 with a live concert recording of a piece he composed for the French situationist theorist Guy Debord, "with Braxton cast as sideman, I taped the concert, not thinking I was going to put it out,” Norton says. “But I was so happy with the results that I thought, well, this should come out.” More recently, Norton has been working in various configurations with musicians Tony Malaby, Dave Ballou, John Lindberg, Scott Robinson, Connie Crothers, and J. D. Parran.

Studios

Chapman

Kevin Norton worked in the Chapman studio.

Chapman Studio was funded by Mrs. Alice Woodrough Chapman in memory of her husband, composer George Alexander Chapman. Symmetrically massed, the building is stuccoed on the exterior with a natural, unpainted cement. Its unusual half-timbered ornament consists of slender, knotty spruce poles painted a dark green color. A central, peak-roofed entrance porch appears on the north side…

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