B.Mus. in Organ Performance, Kansas State College of Pittsburg, Kansas (1967)
M.Mus. in Composition and Theory, Pittsburg State University (1970)
Teachers included Nadia Boulanger (with whom he studied composition/analysis in 1966), William Wandlandt, Jacque-Louis Monod and Robert Cogan.

Instructor in music theory and college organist, Prairie View A&M College, Texas (1970-71)
Consultant for Corporate Art Services, San Francisco, California (1979-80) and School of American Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1980-81)

Jack Briece acknowledged as his "teachers without school:
John Cage (writings/music 1968--)
Yoko Ono (interior-exterior expansions)
Book of Changes (1971--)."

He traveled in the United States 1970-72 performing works of American composers including John Cage, Frederic Rzewski, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, Larry Austin, Annea Lockwood, Udo Kasemets and Daniel Lentz. In 1971 he designed and performed with Jim Nollman an experimental music program for the Children’s Museum in Boston. In 1972 Briece co-founded Music Music, a San Francisco-based group devoted to new music and international exchange programs with Mexico, Brazil and England, and continued as its director until 1982. His long association with music in Central and South America also included designing the music program and teaching music at Escuela Americana, Tegucigalpa, Honduras (1967-69), attending the first symposium of electronic music sponsored by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (1974), and working with the United States Information Service in Mexico City to create a televison concert series devoted to contemporary Latin American music.

Briece’s wide-ranging concerns as a composer included speculative metaphysics, the musical instruments and sensibilities of ancient cultures, technology, ritual and improvisation. His work includes precisely notated instrumental pieces such as Time Slice for Brass Quintet (1983); improvisatory, Cage-inspired works like Situation KO (1973) for bells and stones based on the I Ching; and Heterophonious Fool (1982-84), a series of pieces for four amplified portable Casio synthesizers, about which Peter Garland wrote: "These pieces illustrate Jack’s ‘guerilla’ attitudes towards the new technologies. Instead of an advanced (expensive) instrument, Jack utilized what are widely viewed as merely toys. Jack’s music celebrates technology, but his gentle and humorous approach radically humanizes it." Performances of his instrumental music include Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas (1973), the Biblioteca Benjamin Franklin in Mexico City (1977), and the Santa Fe Festival of the Arts (1983).

In 1973 his music began to incorporate the then newly developing videotape medium. His multi-channel videomusic with live interactive performances were presented at the San Francisco Arts Festival, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Conceptual Art, The Kitchen in New York, New Mexico Film Festival in Albuquerque, the 1984 New Music America Festival, and on cable television channels in California and New Mexico.

In the 1980s Briece traveled extensively in Finland, where he composed and presented his own as well as other American composers’ music and wrote articles about contemporary music in Finland for Musical America and other publications.

Jack Briece died of AIDS in Aptos, California at the age of 43 on March 26, 1988.

—Nurit Tilles

WORKS:

SOLO INSTRUMENT

For Tuba
note: from Music Fer Yer Ears
performance: Bibliotec Benjamin Franklin, Mexico City, Mexico 1977

Homage to William Burroughs
for: piano
date: 1970
duration: 10:00
published: American Composers Alliance

Infinity Crescendi
for: flute (any number and type)
date: 1971
duration: 10:00
published: American Composers Alliance

Lemon Fresh Joy
for: viola
date: 1971
duration: 10:00
published: American Composers Alliance
performance: Berkeley Piano Club, Berkeley, CA 1974

M A P (Modified American Plan)
for: piano
date: 1971
duration: 30:00
published: American Composers Alliance

Monteverdi Ostinato
for: piano
date: 1965
duration: 1:00
published: American Composers Alliance

Shao Yung's Sequence (First Line)
for: alto flute
date: 1973, revised 1985
duration: 10:00
published: American Composers Alliance

Texture/Variation
for: organ
date: 1970

Three Pieces for Unaccompanied Trombone
for: trombone
date: 1965
duration: 10:00
published: American Composers Alliance
source: American Music Center

VOICE

Carol’s Song
for: solo voice
date: 1978
note: written for the wedding of his sister Carol

Four Songs on Poetry of John Ciardi
for: baritone and piano
date: 1965
     On Leaving The Internal Revenue Office
     Choices
     After A Fire
     On Roman Traffic

Larvatus Prodeat
for: voice, bass flute, tape
date: 1972

Mass
for: SATB and organ
date: 1961
duration: 15:00
published: American Composers Alliance

Music for Jim’s Dance
for: audiotape, multiphonic voice, ceramic percussion
date: 1974

Requiem for 4 Instruments
for: alto voice, flute, trombone, cello
date: 1966
duration: 5:00
published: American Composers Alliance
performance: Fontainebleau, France 1966

We Adore Thee, O Christ
for: SATB and organ
date: 1964
duration: 3:00
published: American Composers Alliance

CHAMBER/MIXED ENSEMBLE

Arousing Wind and Thunder
for: four amplified portable Casio synthesizers
date: 1984
note: part of Heterophonious Fool series
performance: Peter Garland, Lynne Lawlor, Jack Loeffler, Landon Young, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM 1988 (Jack Briece 1945-1988: A Retrospective)

Fanfare for Winds
for: piccolo, 8 clarinets, 3 saxophones, 3 trumpets, 2 baritones, 3 trombones, tuba, and percussion (3 players — cymbal, bass drum, snare drum)
date: 1970
duration: 4:00
note: composed for a junior high school band.
published: American Composers Alliance

Heterophonious Dog
for: chamber orchestra (strings, trumpet, horn, bassoon, oboe)
date: 1982

Heterophonious Fool
for: four amplified portable Casio synthesizers
date: 1982-84
note: series of five pieces including Arousing Wind and Thunder, Peace and Pushup Words and Food (see separate listings).

KO
for: temple bells, stones
date: 1973
duration: 60:00
published: American Composers Alliance
note: first published in Soundings (1973)
performance: Les Salons Vides, San Francisco 1973

Movies Fer Yer Ears
for: instrumental/vocal solos and ensembles
date: 1971

Music for Elizabeth's Dance: Covenant Two
for: string orchestra, or string ensemble (4 violins, 3 violas, 3 violoncellos)
date: 1983
duration: 18:00
published: American Composers Alliance
note: ballet score
source: New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Music for Terry Maignaud
for: bells, Chinese temple bowl, antique cymbals
date: 1987

Nine Dragons for Four Percussionists
for: 2 marimbas, xylophone, vibraphone, tam-tam, 6 suspended cymbals, 5 mated cymbals, suspended sizzle cymbal, 2 garbage can lids, 12 earthen pots, dry tree branches, bird whistles (tape), bass drum, tambourine
date: 1987

On the Back of the Tortoise
for: bamboo windchimes, stones, primitive flute
date: 1973
duration: 60:00
published: American Composers Alliance
performance: Rothko Chapel, Houston, TX 1973

Passacaglia and Allegro
for: viola and piano
date: 1965
duration: 7:00
published: American Composers Alliance
source: American Music Center

Peace
for: four amplified portable Casio synthesizers
date: 1984
note: part of Heterophonious Fool series
performance: Peter Garland, Lynne Lawlor, Jack Loeffler, Landon Young, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM 1988 (Jack Briece: A Retrospective)

Praxis
for: electric band
date: 1970
performance: Group for New Music, Contemporary Arts Center, Oklahoma City, OK 1970

Pushup Words and Food
for: four amplified portable Casio synthesizers
date: 1984
note: part of Heterophonious Fool series

Septet
for: glockenspiel, 2 horns, electric piano, harp, timpani, electric bass guitar
date: 1985
duration: 10:00
published: American Composers Alliance
source: American Music Center; New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Three Motets
for: 3-part mixed chorus, 2 violins, viola, violoncello, 4 crumhorns, organ, bird whistles, crickets, and claves (with optional goose call, thunder sheet, and wooden-tongued metal bell)
date: 1983
duration: 8:00
text: Yuen Ling (Chinese book of months from third century b.c.), names of constellations and stars; Veni Creator Spiritus (Latin hymn) used as invocation
published: American Composers Alliance
source: American Music Center

Time Slice
for: brass quintet (2 trumpets, horn, trombone, tuba)
date: 1983
duration: 9:00
published: American Composers Alliance
source: American Music Center
note: published in Soundings 14-15 (1986)
performance: New Mexico Brass Quintet

Two Seasons
for: alto recorder, soprano recorder, ceramic, bamboo, wood percussion
date: 1982
performance: Lynne Lawlor, Kerry Kantner, Peter Garland, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM 1988 (Jack Briece: A Retrospective)

Winter Cruise
for: two pianos, 4 - 12 hands
date: 1979

TAPE, MIXED MEDIA & VIDEO

Firewind
for: 9 contact microphones
date: 1973
note: electronic manipulation by Briece of sound created by Annea Lockwood’s Piano Burning
performance: Ocean Beach, CA 1973

Love Song
for: videomusic
date: 1975
performance: The Kitchen, New York, 1976 (as part of Beth Anderson’s work He Said)

Mandala
for: audiotape
date: 1981
duration: 6:17

Monkey Eighty
for: videomusic
date: 1979

Music for Joan
for: audiotape
date: 1974

Plutonian Wash
for: videomusic
date: 1982

Questioned Concerning Its Nature, Universe Replied...
for: mixed [integrated] media
date: 1971 or 1972

Santa Claus
for: videomusic
date: 1975

Six Days Hsu
for: audiotape
date: 1974

Sui — Hommage to Conlon Nancarrow
for: audiotape
date: 1974
performance: Linda Durham Gallery, Santa Fe 1982

Summer Music
for: 3-channel videomusic (with optional live performer playing washboard, stones, skin drum, rattles, rasp or portable electronics)
date: 1983
duration: 21:00, 28:00 or 49:00

Ta Yu
for: television receivers, stones, flute
date: 1973

UNCOMPLETED WORKS:
Piece for winds, brass and percussion commissioned by Santa Fe Community Orchestra.

WRITINGS:
Manifestations, masters thesis (1970).
"Harmonious Universe Sounding in Time" (article), "Musical Theoretics" (article), Soundings or EAR (?).
"Avanti!" (article on Finnish chamber orchestra), Nordic Sounds, September 1987.
"Where’s the Heart?" (article on Helsinki Biennale), Musical America, March 1988.
"Today’s Finnish Composers" (article), Musical America, May 1986.
Article about joiku (epic songs) tradition of the Samis (Lapps), Finnish Music Quarterly, April 1986.

DISCOGRAPHY:

As Performer:
Cage: 62 Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham, 1750 Arch Records.
"62 Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham (33-37)," Jack Briece, performer, The Dial-A-Poem Poets: "Totally Corrupt", Girono Poetry Systems GPS 008-009 (LP, 1976) (side B, track 12).

As Composer:
Heterophonious Fool, self-produced limited edition cassette, Anasazi Animation Company (1984).
Time Slice (original version), New Mexico Brass Quintet, cassette, Composers Society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Unknown

PERFORMING RIGHTS AFFILIATION:
BMI

RESOURCES:
American Composers Alliance
73 Spring Street, Room 505
New York NY 10012
Tel: (212) 362-8900
Fax: (212) 925-6798
info@composers.com
www.composers.com

American Music Center
30 West 26th Street, Suite 1001
New York, NY 10010
Tel: (212) 366-5260
Fax: (212) 366-5265
www.amc.net

American Music Center Collection
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023-7498
www.nypl.org

MUSICAL EXECUTOR:
Carol McKay (sister)
219 Sand Street
Aptos, CA 95003
(831) 688-8926
briece2000@yahoo.com

OTHER CONTACTS:
Unknown