Ingram Marshall

While composer Ingram Marshall’s earliest compositions were electronic works, he later wrote extensively for live musicians, including the Kronos Quartet. In the mid-’60s, he studied under Vladimir Ussachevsky, among others, while in another program at Columbia. Marshall learned from Morton Subotnick, first (briefly) in Greenwich Village, then at Cal Arts as his assistant during the early ’70s. It was while earning his masters at Cal Arts that Marshall was first exposed to Indonesian music, which he then added to his studies. While he blended his current musical interests in his own work (writing pieces for electronics and Balinese flute, for instance), Marshall continued to explore other styles of composition as well, as when he traveled to Sweden in the mid-’70s on a Fulbright Fellowship to study text-sound composition. “Fog Tropes” (1982) was the best known of his works that incorporate live (real time) electronic manipulation. From the mid-’80s on, Marshall wrote ensemble music, not necessarily with electronics. His work for the Kronos Quartet included “Voces Resonae” (1984) and “Fog Tropes II.” He also composed the orchestral, one-movement piece “Sinfonia ‘Dolce far Niente.’” Ingram Marshall died on May 31, 2022 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 80 years old. ~ Joslyn Layne