Clogs
Padma Newsome
Bryce Dessner
Rachael Elliott
Thomas Kozumplik
History[edit]
The band members, (Bryce Dessner, Rachael Elliott, Thomas Kozumplik and Padma Newsome), met in the late 1990s while studying at the Yale School of Music.[6][7] Newsome, born in 1961 in Alice Springs, Australia,[8] started his career as a concert violinist in the Sydney Symphony, before a six-year detour took him to an ashram in the remote region of New South Wales. He began composing in the 1990s at the University of Adelaide, when he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that brought him to America.[6] Dessner is an established soloist and veteran of groups Bang on a Can All-Stars and the National,[6] which has given him in contact with Philip Glass and Terry Riley. Elliott released her debut album, Polka the Elk, in 2011, which displays her bassoon music and includes contributions from Newsome, David Lang and Tawnie Olson.[9]
Style[edit]
Clogs' "classical" music is the result of a peculiar writing process more akin to a rock band or a jazz quartet. The members come to rehearsals with basic ideas that the group riffs on and develops in jam sessions and live performance. Their influences include John Cage, Olivier Messiaen, and Philip Glass;[10] and a 16th century lute player.[11] Newsome later arranges these ideas into elegant and complex musical narratives that meld and extend the ideas of minimalist, modernist, and romantic composers, adding sounds and melodies drawn from the folk music of India, the Jewish diaspora, and everywhere else.[12]