Randy was not an eccentric composer (even though he wrote a piece using billiard balls to play a piano). He was just an honest composer. The work he did came directly from his perception of who he was, and what he wanted to say. We’re all the more fortunate because he was so good at expressing these things, and what he had to say was, and is, such a joy to hear.Paul Lansky

About Randy

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Randy Hostetler was known by his fellow artists as an intellectual “composer’s composer,” but he was beloved for his puckish sense of humor, for his wildly enthusiastic love of all sounds, for all things “Cagean,” for his embrace of experimental musical and multi-media works, as well as for improvisational works, and for his unstinting support of other artists. Stories about Randy and his often hilarious performances continue to be told. For example, among his memorable concerts at CalArts was his third year concert in l989 that included his cajoling some of his fellow students into rolling his friend’s Honda into CalArts and on to the stage at the small ROD theater in the middle of the night so that the concert could begin the next day with him inside of the Honda “playing” the car in an original composition for wipers, horn and squeaky door. Former Yale students still recall his “Sheep’s Clothing” performance in which he led a small platoon of “performers” into the campus’s Sterling Library at a busy time of day for the library, positioning each of the performers by a card catalog cabinet until the signal came from him to begin a “percussion” work by opening and slamming the cabinet drawers.

Randy composed more than fifty works in his short lifetime, including scores for chamber orchestra, solo and combined instruments, chorus, film, tape, found objects and ambient sounds. His multilayered, recorded text work, Happily Ever After, which was released on cd by Frogpeak in 1999 has been widely acclaimed as one of the best electronic works of the 20th century. The Princeton composer Paul Lansky wrote that “It was unlike anything I had ever heard and it immediately changed my view of what music is and can be.” A shorter version of “Happily” was published on cd by Perspectives of New Music in 1988, and the complete piece was broadcast on Carl Stone’s public radio program of new music around the same time.

Deep, an improvisational work for wind instruments and tape of a sleeping person’s snoring sounds, was performed by the California Ear Unit on its Denmark tour and rebroadcast on Danish Public Radio in l997. The Talujon Quartet and several members of the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1998 headlined a New York MATA festival performance of Hostetler’s chamber orchestra work, P[L]ACES, which was composed while he was a student at CalArts.

Hostetler’s iconic piece for piano and billiard ball, 8 was written at CalArts for Mel Powell and its performance at Powell’s public birthday celebration concert was hailed by the L.A. Times’ critics as “hilariously gimmicky” and a highlight of the concert. The brief work requires the pianist to play the piano and juggle a billiard ball at the same time. It was performed by New York pianist, Jenny Lin, at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge in 2010 and also received its Canadian premiere with Ms. Lin at the Winnipeg Symphony Festival of New Music the same year. Ms. Lin’s performance, as well as one in the studio by Hostetler himself, can be seen on YouTube. In January 2010 the composer’s string quartet, Palm Quart, with a score consisting of a video created by Francesca Talenti of Palm Trees in Los Angeles, was performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall’s Redcat Theater in Los Angeles. A saxophone quartet work, Twenty Five Years that was composed by Hostetler while he was an undergraduate at Yale to commemorate the 25th wedding anniversary of Mary and Larry Hewes who commissioned the work was performed again by the Washington Saxophone Quartet in 2010.

A gifted musician from birth, Randy Hostetler began taking piano lessons at the age of eight at the American University’s preparatory department in Washington, DC, and completed his first composition, a minuet in the style of Mozart, before he was nine. His many early compositions included a twelve tone piece, World War III, composed when he was eleven, a violin sonata when he was twelve, and a piece for prepared piano when he was thirteen. He attended high school at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington and composed several choral pieces for its chamber chorus and orchestral students. He also organized a barbershop quartet and played piano with a jazz combo of fellow students that was heard on the local affiliate of Pacifica Radio.

Randy attended Yale University from 1981 to 1985, majoring and graduating with honors in music. While at Yale, he continued to study piano and to compose. His teachers and mentors included Martin Bresnick and Frederic Rzewski, and he enthusiastically participated in “Sheep’s Clothing” a Dadaist performance organization created by Martin Bresnick. He helped organize with his roommate, David Edelson (now David Tolchinsky) an experimental band, “Institutional Quality.” He also sang with Yale’s first coed singing group, Redhot and Blue, became its director (“pitch”) in l984 and arranged several pieces of music for the group, most notably, Gershwin’s “Summertime,” and Monk’s “Round Midnight” which arrangements continue to be sung by the group today and can be heard on YouTube. At Yale’s graduation in 1985, Hostetler was awarded Yale’s Friends of Music prize as the class’s most promising composer, particularly for his chamber orchestra work, Big Mac.

After graduation from Yale, and a year living in Boston, Randy Hostetler entered the master’s program in music at the California Institute of the Arts in l986 where he studied composition with Mel Powell, Paul Lansky and Morton Subotnick. He graduated with an MFA in music in l989 and continued to live in the Silver Lake and then Echo Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In l990 he was invited to participate in June in Buffalo’s summer program, and in subsequent years received a recording grant from New York’s Harvestworks, as well as several ASCAP awards.

While living in Los Angeles, Randy Hostetler established and curated the Living Room Series, a bi-monthly concert of new music from 1989-1993 that attracted scores of musicians from Los Angeles, the San Francisco bay area and even from further away. The composers Michael Fink, Frederic Rzewski, Steve Horowitz and Arthur Jarvinen were among the participating performers. The series included what is thought to be the first live Los Angeles performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations, an event that lasted twenty four hours and included more than two dozen pianists, including the United Kingdom’s Christopher Hobbs. Hostetler also began to study and perform performance art with Sten Rudstrom, Ernie Lafky, Mike Bell and others.

Music

Selected works by Randy Hostetler. All available scores and performance instructions may be freely downloaded.
Performance materials including parts and hi-resolution video files may be obtained by contacting Zona Hostetler.
A complete list of works can be found here.

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• Choral Music
• Choral Arrangements

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8 [1986] 3:00
for pianist

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Big Mac [1985] for flute, bass clarinet, horn, soprano, baritone, violin, viola, ‘cello and contrabass

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Download the score - Part 1 Download the score - Part 2 Download the score - Part 3

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Floaters [1989] 4:15
for string quartet with video score

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Happily Ever After [1987] 45:00
pre-recorded storytelling collage
CD recording available from Frog Peak Music

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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Palm Quart [1988] 10:00
for string quartet with video score

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More about Randy and his music