Mark Abel

Composer Mark Abel is known for an eclectic style that encompasses elements of the rock music he played earlier in his career. He turned to classical music later in life, while also pursuing a career as a journalist. Abel was born on April 28, 1948, in Hartford, Connecticut. He attended Stanford University briefly in the late 1960s but then moved to New York, where he became a significant figure in the city's 1970s rock scene. Abel played on albums by Tom Verlaine and Michael Brown (The Left Banke) as well as leading groups of his own. In 1971, he was a member of the choir heard on the recording of jazz pianist Carla Bley's three-hour fusion work Escalator Over the Hill. In 1983, Abel returned to California and entered the journalism field, rising to the position of foreign editor of the San Francisco Chronicle before leaving in 2003 to devote himself to music full-time. While working as a journalist, he experimented with styles that were closer to concert music than to rock, although the rock element in his music has never disappeared. His style is eclectic, incorporating influences from Ives, Brahms, and Henri Duparc, among many other composers. Abel has issued his compositions mostly on albums bearing his own names; there have been six as of 2020, beginning with Songs of Life, Love and Death in 2006. He began to gain wider attention with The Dream Gallery (2012), a song cycle for seven soloists and chamber orchestra with sometimes satirical texts ("We love the homeless down on Telegraph, somewhat less on upper Solano") about ordinary Californians. The work was heard by Delos label director Carol Rosenberger, who arranged a performance of the work in southern California and signed Abel to the label for the albums Terrain of the Heart (2014) and Home is a Harbor (2016). The latter album contained Abel's first opera, also entitled Home is a Harbor, as well as art songs. Up to that point, Abel's music was primarily vocal, and he continued to write songs, often collaborating with soprano Hila Plitmann and releasing some of the results on the 2018 album Time and Distance. Abel's 2020 release The Cave of Wondrous voice moved in a new direction, comprising mostly chamber works.
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