Dec. 3, 2020
My dear friend Noah Creshevsky left this world last night. It was not unexpected. I knew he'd been dealing with various health issues for quite a while. This past May he confided to me that he'd undergone surgery for advanced bladder cancer, had declined further treatment, and was on home hospice service. I had a good, hard cry then and have been waiting for the phone call ever since. Today it came. He died peacefully, with his beloved partner of many years, David Sachs, sleeping by his side.
Noah was a remarkable composer of electronic music, in a style that he called "Hyperrealism." Rather than using synthesizers or computer-generated electronic sounds, his pieces were meticulously constructed from thousands of tiny samples of acoustic instruments and voices, often lifted from commercial CDs of music from the 17th and 18th centuries. So while it contained superficially familiar sonic references to the Western classical canon, his music could not possibly have been played by humans. There are certainly plenty of other composers who use sampling, but none in quite the same way. Noah's music is absolutely distinctive. (I’ve made a chronological playlist of all of his work that is currently available on YouTube.)
Noah studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and with Luciano Berio at Juilliard. He taught composition for thirty-one years at Brooklyn College, where he and Jacob Druckman were the first co-Directors of the Electronic Music Studio. Under the guidance of Charles Dodge, that studio later became the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music, for which Noah served as Director from 1994 to 1999. He also taught at Juilliard, Hunter College, and Princeton.
I first "met" Noah in the mid-90s when I was still running a CD label and he sent me a cassette tape with some pieces for possible use on The Aerial, a series of compilations I was curating. His music was certainly good, and I appreciated the technical craftsmanship involved, but it didn't fit easily with the kinds of things I was usually inclined to publish in those days, unless I found something else that worked well with it. I put Noah's tape in the slush pile box and sent him the standard not-quite-rejection letter: "Thanks for your tape, we'll keep it in mind and call you if we ever decide to use something…"
I soon got a note back from Noah thanking me for listening but also asking what my music sounded like. I took this as a kind of challenge – cordial enough, but still intimidating. "Oh yeah? Let's hear you do better, pal!" At the time I felt like I was just starting to find my way as a composer and wasn't very confident about my own music. But I figured it was a fair request so I sent him a tape, expecting him to either scoff at it or never respond at all. Sometime later I was working in the office when the fax machine came on, spewing a long scroll of thermal paper down onto the floor. Noah had hand-written detailed responses to every piece on my tape, and his comments were insightful and surprisingly encouraging. I still have that fax, though it is barely legible at this point. Thus began a long correspondence and deep friendship that I believe was truly meaningful for both of us.
Noah was an important mentor to me, even though I never actually studied with him. We always shared our work with each other, and he was genuinely supportive of me, even though my work bears no resemblance to his. He brought my first sound installation, Emanations, to Brooklyn College, and a few years ago he even sampled the singers from my piece Index Filicum on his own The Four Seasons, by which I was extremely flattered. He was always so generous to me, and I did my best to reciprocate.
At one point Noah told me that he felt he was exhausting his technique of sampling classical CDs. I suggested he widen his palette and try sampling non-Western instruments and recording improvising musicians in the studio and sampling that, which he did. I later had a chance to mention him to John Zorn, who ended up releasing three of Noah's albums on his Tzadik label.
In 2011, another dear (and now departed) friend, Lou Cohen, came out from Boston to play at the Seattle Improvised Music Festival. Lou had an earlier life as a classical composer, which he gave up for many years to raise a family. In his retirement he came back to music and got involved in computer music, and was active as an improviser using Wiimote controllers to manipulate samples on his laptop. We were at my house listening to music and I played him some of Noah's work, which he had never heard before. He was smitten, I put them in contact, and they became great friends. Lou even traveled down to New York to visit Noah, and ended up dedicating a piece to him.
In all the years of our friendship, I myself only saw Noah in person twice, when I was visiting New York and he and David invited me to their apartment for dinner. We had delicious food, too much wine, and delightful conversation. And once when my wife Mary was in New York they insisted on having her over as well, and of course they all hit it off splendidly. It just shows that lasting friendship comes in many forms, and that physical distance need be no barrier to real affection.
I will miss Noah terribly, but will cherish his memory and remember him with great love and admiration. Travel well, my friend.