Dorothy Moskowitz & The United States of Alchemy

Singer, composer, and instrumentalist Dorothy Moskowitz is best remembered by fans of forward-thinking rock music as a member of the influential experimental band the United States of America, whose self-titled 1968 album made striking use of electronics and avant-garde composition techniques grafted to psychedelic rock. Moskowitz's vocals and lyrics were an important part of what made the group's only album memorable, and she would go on to a subsequent career that was impressively diverse -- she backed Country Joe McDonald, wrote music for the TV series Sesame Street, collaborated with experimental rock musician Todd Tamanend Clark and novelist Tim Lucas, and taught music to children. In her eighties, Moskowitz teamed with avant-garde musician Francesco Paolo Paladino and author and lyricist Luca Chino Ferrari to create Under an Endless Sky, credited to Dorothy Moskowitz & the United States of Alchemy. Born in 1940, Dorothy Moskowitz attended a Jewish school as a child where she learned to sing in Hebrew and taught herself to play piano. While in high school, she took a part-time job as a pianist at a dance school for children, where she refined her keyboard technique and learned the rudiments of songwriting. While attending Bernard College in Manhattan, where she studied government, Moskowitz focused more of her energies on composition, and wrote a new alma mater for the school. In 1963, while she was working for RCA Victor's classical label Red Seal, she met Joseph Byrd, an aspiring composer and producer, and the two became romantically involved. Byrd was working at Capitol Records and Moskowitz took a job there; they worked on several projects together, including writing and recording material for The Life Treasury of Christmas Music, a holiday-themed collection assembled by Capitol in tandem with Life Magazine. When Byrd left New York to relocate to California and study at UCLA, Moskowitz joined him, helping him produce concerts with a wide range of performers. They also collaborated with Gayathri Rajapur and Harihar Rao on Vocal and Instrumental Ragas from South India, a collection of Indian traditional music released in 1967 by Folkways Records. Byrd and Moskowitz split up in 1966 and she returned to New York City, but the following year, he invited her to come to California, where he was putting together a rock group that would use an unusual instrumental palette and incorporate electronic instruments and sonic manipulation. Moskowitz agreed, and she became a vocalist and lyricist with the United States of America, Byrd's ambitious musical project. The band landed a recording contract with Columbia, and Moskowitz's cool, theatrical vocals would be a major feature of the group's first and only album, released in 1968. The set was ahead of its time, and the musicians had to learn how to re-create its maverick sounds on-stage; it was a commercial disappointment, and it would be years before it earned a cult following that belatedly gave the group the recognition they deserved. The United States of America broke up in 1969, and Moskowitz moved on to new projects. Moskowitz's next major gig came in 1972, when Country Joe McDonald assembled a new group for a world tour. Calling it "the All Star Band," it included members of Big Brother & the Holding Company, Country Joe & the Fish guitarist Barry Melton, and Moskowitz on piano and vocals. The band spent much of their time in Europe, playing the Fete de L'Humanite in Paris (a festival that attracted 300,000 listeners) and recording the album Paris Sessions in nearby Herouville. The All Star Band was defunct by the end of 1973, and Moskowitz joined a psych-influenced country-rock band based in San Francisco called Steamin' Freeman, who released a pair of albums in 1975 and 1976. She provided music and vocals for a short animated film called Cracks about a young girl who imagines the cracks on her wall have a life of their own -- it was aired regularly on the iconic PBS television series Sesame Street. In 1978, she teamed with the jazz pianist Dick Fregulia for an LP titled Yesterdays, credited to Fregulia & Moskowitz. In the '80s and '90s, Moskowitz devoted most of her time to creating music for children and working in music education; she was well-known as part of the elementary school music program at schools in Piedmont, California. She was also part of a radio documentary series called "Perfect Rose," about the life and writings of Dorothy Parker; Moskowitz set several of Parker's witty poems to music, and performed them as part of the show. In 2021, she collaborated with critic and novelist Tim Lucas to create a set of songs to accompany his book The Secret Life of Love Songs. The recordings included guitar work from Gary Lucas and vocals from Mike Fornatale. That same year, Moskowitz composed a piece titled "The James Webb Triptych," a contemporary experimental trilogy inspired by the launch of the James Webb telescope. In 2021, Moskowitz was approached by Italian electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino, who asked her to contribute to a piece he was writing. Moskowitz felt their musical ideas were compatible, and they began writing together, with Moskowitz also providing vocals, and in time writer Luca Chino Ferrari became part of the creative team. The trio dubbed themselves Dorothy Moskowitz & the United States of Alchemy, and in 2023 they issued Under an Endless Sky Tompkins Square.
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