Bio
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Corey Dargel (b. 1977) is a Texas-born, Brooklyn-based composer and singer-songwriter whose gentle assault on pop and classical idioms creates a tension that pervades his music. Deadpan and detached vocals reveal heartbreaking intimacies, awkward and obtrusive drum patterns struggle against fragile harmonies, vocals and music uneasily oppose each other as songs stumble to their ends. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Dargel [is] one of the more original and consistently provocative artists pushing at the margins of modern classical music and adventurous pop.” The New Yorker magazine calls him “a baroquely unclassifiable” composer of “ingenious nouveau art songs.”
Dargel studied music composition at Interlochen Arts Academy, then at Oberlin Conservatory with John Luther Adams, Pauline Oliveros, Brenda Hutchinson, and Lewis Neilson. In the summer of 2001, he moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he performed as a singer-songwriter with self-produced electronic accompaniments. He eventually earned the attention of classical music critics Alex Ross, Anthony Tommasini, Amanda MacBlane, and Steve Smith, who recognized an appealing level of intricacy and quirkiness beneath the surface of his songs.
Dargel’s debut album of synth-pop songs about falling in love with famous, or infamous, people, Less Famous Than You, was released in 2006 on the London pop label, Use Your Teeth. The New York Times praised the songs as “richly layered creations with undulant rhythm tracks, chorale-like chord progressions, skittish flute lines and fractured phrases.” Salon called Dargel the “[m]usical progeny of Stephin Merritt…but with the unmistakable complicating impulse and rococo ingenuity of a conservatory-trained…new music-obsessed mind,” and Gramophone gave the album a positive review, noting “a compositional sense guaranteed to keep close listeners on their toes. Words and music are truly equal partners.”
Dargel’s second synth-pop album, Other People’s Love Songs (2008, New Amsterdam Records), was comprised of thirteen custom-made love songs commissioned by real-life couples. The New York Times wrote of Other People’s Love Songs, “Mr. Dargel sings in a modest, sweet-toned, conversational way, and writes songs whose lyrics and melodies are at once wistful and wry, tender and irreverent…[G]iving voice to the lives and relationships of his subjects, he invests melodies with playful melismatic turns, evoking Kurt Weill cabaret…”
For his third album, the ambitious 2-CD set Someone Will Take Care of Me (2010, New Amsterdam Records), Dargel dramatically shifted his M.O. from writing synth-pop songs to composing fully notated “song cycles” dealing with decidedly darker subject matter. Someone Will Take Care of Me features Dargel performing two song cycles with the chamber music group International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the concert pianist Kathleen Supové, and the drummer/percussionist David T. Little. “Thirteen Near-Death Experiences” (CD 1) follows the life cycle of a character who suffers from debilitating hypochondria, and “Removable Parts” (CD 2) uses the strange phenomenon of voluntary amputation, i.e. people who wish to have a healthy limb removed, as a metaphor for more relatable feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and longing. WNYC’s New Sounds called Someone Will Take Care of Me “a brilliant collection,” and in New Music Box, Frank J. Oteri wrote, “Dargel is doing much more than writing extremely well-crafted songs. He is creating larger arcs of meaning, both musically and lyrically.”
Dargel continues to call into question the distinction between composer and singer-songwriter in his most recent projects, including Hold Yourself Together (songs about composure and technology for voice, guitars, synthesizers, and drum machines), Say Yes (false-comfort songs for voice and electric guitar quartet), and Every Day Is the Same Day (songs about clinical depression for voice and amplified violin with live digital looping). He recorded a new album of synth pop songs, Last Words from Texas, setting to music the last statements of executed offenders put to death by the state of Texas. Released in 2011 as a free downloadable EP as part of a New York Times profile of Dargel and his work, Last Words from Texas is now being arranged acoustically for the amplified chamber ensemble Newspeak. The NYC-based chamber orchestra, Le Train Bleu, has commissioned a new set of songs, More Last Words from Texas, to premiere in April of 2012.
Dargel has been the subject of in-studio interviews broadcast on PRI’s Studio 360, NPR’s Weekend Edition, KALW San Francisco’s Then and Now, WFMT Chicago’s Critical Thinking with Andrew Patner, and WNYC’s Spinning On Air. He even earned a tweet from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for his art-song settings of the remarks of Condoleezza Rice.
Dargel is a founding member of, and performer with, the Brooklyn-based experimental theater company, Laboratory Theater, whose work has been described as “ironic, weird, experimental, anti-dramatic, and compelling” (Village Voice) and “esthetic purity under the guise of the absurd” (New York Press).
Awards
Commissioning Music/USA (Meet The Composer, 2010), Aaron Copland Fund for Music’s Recording Program (two awards, 2010 and 2009), MetLife Creative Connections (Meet The Composer, two awards, 2010 and 2009), Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theater (New Dramatists, 2008), MAP Fund (Creative Capital, 2008), New York Innovative Theater Awards (2007) Outstanding Performance-Art Production awarded to Removable Parts, Composer Assistance Program (American Music Center, 2007), New York State Music Fund (Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, 2006), American Composers Forum (Jerome Foundation, 2006)
Residencies
Brooklyn Philharmonic Composer Fellow (2010-11), MacDowell Colony (two residencies, 2006 and 2008), HERE Arts Center (artist in residence, 2005-07), New Dramatists (Composer/Librettist Studio, 2005), Atlantic Center for the Arts (2004).
photo by Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler of New Catalogue.
