Luke Gullickson is a musician whose aesthetic embraces folk, post-rock, new jazz, and contemporary classical styles. He also plays and records under the name Golconda.
Luke completed his Master of Music degree in composition at the University of Texas. While living in Austin and spending his summers music directing for Colorado's Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre, Luke became increasingly committed to a social and communal vision of music-making. This resolution soon led him to the California desert and an artist residency at Joshua Tree National Park, where he began to study and practice acoustic guitar fingerpicking styles. Luke subsequently traveled Europe and Central America before landing at Canada's prestigious Banff Centre for the Arts, where he studied improvisation and composition under a TD Jazz Fellowship.
Luke has released three albums of original songs under the name Golconda, with a fourth, From the Canyons to the Star, due in May 2012. His concert music has been performed by the Chicago Composers Orchestra, Singers on New Ground, the Bel Cuore Quartet, and the Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles. Luke is also an active pianist with a hand in new music as well as jazz/improvisation. In recent years he has played many original compositions for solo piano and chamber-jazz groups in concert halls, galleries, and studio settings. In 2011 he performed Paul Bowles' rarely-heard Concerto for Two Pianos, Winds, and Percussion with the University of Texas New Music Ensemble. In 2012, during a return visit to Banff, he played the Canadian premiere of Ryan Brown's Four Pieces for Solo Piano and recorded several new arrangements of Bob Dylan compositions.
Luke plays piano with the Grant Wallace Band, a trio of composer-performers whose music is inspired by outsider artists including its namesake. Luke is also one half, with composer Ben Hjertmann, of a loose confederation known as Gullickson/Hjertmann Modern Musical Interface. This duo recently released a complete cover version of Beck's One Foot in the Grave. Rumors circulate that Luke has also serve in the role of producer for two acclaimed spoken-word albums.
An energetic teacher of everything from music to the LSAT, Luke has also worked as an Outdoor Educator and wilderness expedition leader with New Mexico's Cottonwood Gulch Foundation.
Since 2007 Luke has consistently published writings on music and culture in blog form. He has a special research interest in American experimentalism; recently he authored a paper on the music of Kyle Gann. Luke holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and History, summa cum laude, from Illinois Wesleyan University and also studied harmony and counterpoint at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.
When not wandering various corners of the American west, Luke lives in Chicago.
Please write lukegullickson (at) gmail.
.
Luke completed his Master of Music degree in composition at the University of Texas. While living in Austin and spending his summers music directing for Colorado's Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre, Luke became increasingly committed to a social and communal vision of music-making. This resolution soon led him to the California desert and an artist residency at Joshua Tree National Park, where he began to study and practice acoustic guitar fingerpicking styles. Luke subsequently traveled Europe and Central America before landing at Canada's prestigious Banff Centre for the Arts, where he studied improvisation and composition under a TD Jazz Fellowship.
Luke has released three albums of original songs under the name Golconda, with a fourth, From the Canyons to the Star, due in May 2012. His concert music has been performed by the Chicago Composers Orchestra, Singers on New Ground, the Bel Cuore Quartet, and the Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles. Luke is also an active pianist with a hand in new music as well as jazz/improvisation. In recent years he has played many original compositions for solo piano and chamber-jazz groups in concert halls, galleries, and studio settings. In 2011 he performed Paul Bowles' rarely-heard Concerto for Two Pianos, Winds, and Percussion with the University of Texas New Music Ensemble. In 2012, during a return visit to Banff, he played the Canadian premiere of Ryan Brown's Four Pieces for Solo Piano and recorded several new arrangements of Bob Dylan compositions.
Luke plays piano with the Grant Wallace Band, a trio of composer-performers whose music is inspired by outsider artists including its namesake. Luke is also one half, with composer Ben Hjertmann, of a loose confederation known as Gullickson/Hjertmann Modern Musical Interface. This duo recently released a complete cover version of Beck's One Foot in the Grave. Rumors circulate that Luke has also serve in the role of producer for two acclaimed spoken-word albums.
An energetic teacher of everything from music to the LSAT, Luke has also worked as an Outdoor Educator and wilderness expedition leader with New Mexico's Cottonwood Gulch Foundation.
Since 2007 Luke has consistently published writings on music and culture in blog form. He has a special research interest in American experimentalism; recently he authored a paper on the music of Kyle Gann. Luke holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and History, summa cum laude, from Illinois Wesleyan University and also studied harmony and counterpoint at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.
When not wandering various corners of the American west, Luke lives in Chicago.
Please write lukegullickson (at) gmail.
.
