David Weinstein is an American musician, composer, electronic keyboardist, sound designer, audio engineer, curator, producer, and archivist. In 1978, with Jim Staley, Dan Senn, and Laurie Szujewska, Weinstein cofounded the avant-garde music series Roulette Intermedium. Weinstein was MoMA/PS1 Director of Public Programs and Managing Director of its radio station, Art Radio WPS1.org, from 2004–2008. He was a Board member and Program Director of the Manhattan alternative space, Clocktower Gallery, and its radio station, Art International Radio, from 2009–15. Since 2016, he has hosted several radio programs and a podcast exploring historic and emerging trends in experimental music. In 2019, he became the archivist and Director of Special Projects for Roulette. As a composer, performer, and collaborator, Weinstein has worked with his own group, Impossible Music, as well as Doris Vila, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Shelley Hirsch, Ned Rothenberg, Paul Dresher, Rhys Chatham, and many others from New York’s downtown experimental music scene. He is known for his traveling installation Illuminated Man (1981) and the albums Haiku Lingo (Review Records/No Man’s Land, 1990) and Perfume (Avant, 1998). In 1992, Weinstein and Shelley Hirsch were awarded the Prix Futura for their collaboration on Hirsch’s “docu-musical” O Little Town of East New York. In 2002, he and Doris Vila won the Jury Prix Ars Electronica for the interactive multimedia installation, The Story Machine, in Bonn, Germany.
Early life and education Born in Chicago in 1954, David Weinstein attended Evanston Township High School 1968–72. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1972–76), he studied piano, as well as violin, contrabass, and voice, with a focus on composition rather than performance. In graduate school, also at University of Illinois, he concentrated on composition with Ben Johnston (1972–76)—a colleague of the pioneering American composer and music theorist Harry Partch—who introduced Weinstein to microtonal music along with deep dives into structure, and Sal Martirano (1976–78), an electronic musician and composer. He worked regularly in their legendary electronic music studios.
From 1976–78, Weinstein taught basic music theory and electronic music techniques at the University of Illinois. From 1978–79, he taught piano and theory at Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago.
In 1978, Weinstein got together with four friends who had also graduated from the University of Illinois—including trombonist Jim Staley, sound-artist Dan Senn, graphic artist Laurie Szujewska, and composer David Means—to form the non-profit Roulette Intermedium Inc., an artists’ collective for the presentation of music, dance, and intermedia. Their first concert was performed at the Old Town School of Folk Music on November 12, 1978.
Roulette After graduating from the University of Illinois with Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in Music, Weinstein joined Szujewska in Chicago in 1978. There, he continued to perform on piano and homemade acoustic instruments at venues including N.A.M.E Gallery, Old Town School and MoMing Dance Center. The following year, Weinstein and Szujewska moved to New York, where they collaborated on developing Roulette into a performance venue in Staley’s TriBeCa loft. Weinstein served as Roulette’s Director of Development (among other positions) from 1979 to 1994, a period when Roulette emerged as one of New York’s most important venues for improvised, experimental music.
During the early years in New York, 1980–1982, Weinstein apprenticed with the master craftsman George Sell, who taught him carpentry, model-making, and stained glass techniques. He also worked as a studio assistant for artists Red Grooms and Judy Pfaff; worked behind the scenes on Sesame Street and The Muppets; and worked as a sound technician for composer Steve Reich.
In 1980, while continuing his work for Roulette, Weinstein began composition and fabrication of a large-scale, floor-based, graphical score called Illuminated Man,Grace Glueck, "Gallery View," The New York Times, Sunday, October 3, 1982. "David Weinstein's dazzling 'Illuminated Man' [is] a huge floorpiece of dyed canvas that is literally an improvisational music/performance score." which would travel to the West Coast, Canada, and the New Music America Festival in Hartford, CT, in 1984. Afterward, it traveled throughout Europe, including to the Serpentine Gallery in London. Then in 1986, Weinstein acquired an Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard, which allowed him to work independently at home, developing arrangements and composing. The instrument could play the sounds of flutes, violins, or pure noise, allowing him to imagine composition in new ways. He collaborated with major performers, including Shelley Hirsch, Ellen Fulman, and Elliott Sharp, and traveled to Europe to perform with John Zorn, Bill Frisell, and others.
As an integral part of the Downtown NYC music scene, Weinstein composed and performed original music,Bernard Holland, "Avant-Garde: 'Bohemia,'" The New York Times, Sunday, May 30, 1982. "David Weinstein's piano piece 'Bohemia' at Roulette Friday night sounded like a small sermon on the evils of modern tuning.… The sounds themselves ranged from motorized rumbles to pneumatic shrieks to shivering high pitched tones to the street sounds of autos and auto-horns."Jon Pareles, "Taped Music: David Weinstein," The New York Times, Thursday, December 15, 1983. "An ear for coincidence and an eclectic record collection were the ingredients for David Weinstein's 'Dance Music for the Independent Contractor,' seven taped pieces presented Saturday at Roulette. Mr. Weinstein had taken the music of contemporaries —Gabrieli and Praetorious, Gregorian and Tibetan monks, Luciano Berio and Thelonious Monk—and played them on top of one another, remixing and editing to reveal unsuspected links. … In 'Mutating Tango,' Mr. Weinstein edited three overlapping recordings of a tango so that each swooping phrase ricocheted in a witty, elegant echolalia." and continued to install site specific works from 1978 to 1994. In 1988, he formed Impossible Music with Tim Spelios, Nicolas Collins, David Shea, and Ted Greenwald. Rather than traditional instruments, the group exclusively used portable CD players, looping and layering sound effects and music.
Together they were featured on MTV News. Spelios and Weinstein have occasionally reconstituted the project with updated tech.
At this time, Weinstein traveled extensively throughout the US and Europe, performing with a variety of ensembles at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, the Portland Art Museum, Canada’s Victoriaville Festival, the Stuttgart Opera, the Munich State Opera, the Berlin Jazz Festival, Amsterdam’s Shaffy Theatre, LOD Festival in Belgium, the Taktlos Festival in Zurich, and in many other museums, galleries, and concert halls, large and small. His technical skills were also in demand for audio engineering projects and production for concerts, recordings, theater, film, video, and dance.
Select Musical Projects Weinstein’s floorpiece installation Bicyclopedia, featuring glass, plastic, wooden and metal objects such as balls, goblets, cans, toys, beads, and other things collected by him over the years, premiered at the exhibition Shishkapop: The Movie at Dance Theatre Workshop NYC in 1992. For each new installation, some indigenous objects would be collected from the neighborhood and added to the mix. For example, for a 1993 installation that Gallerie O Zwei organized as part of the East Berlin nachtbogen 3 festival, Weinstein gathered hundreds of coal bricks from the furnaces of a bathhouse, spilled them onto the sidewalk, and began the assembly process by making patterns using the black coal. As the floor design progressed (for some 30 meters along the front of the building), objects such as glass items, rubber balls, and other toys were introduced—somewhat like themes in a musical piece—and threaded together over the space. The piece has been shown in New York at the Kitchen, Performing Garage and across the US and Europe.Out of Town: The Williamsburg Paradigm, Jonathan Fineberg, ed., Krannert Art Museum and Kinkhead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993, p. 72. https://www.jonathanfineberg.com/assets/files/outoftown.pdf
From 1995–2005 Weinstein contributed electronics and keyboard work for projects by artists including Rhys Chatham, Zeena Parkins, Ned Rothenberg, Paul Dresher, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, and others.
In the late-1990s, Weinstein worked regularly with the video performance ensemble The Poool, and in 1999, he participated in The Poool (is warm), performed in collaboration with musicians Hoppy Kamiyama and Jason Kao Hwang with live video performance installation by Benton Bainbridge, Angie Eng, and Nancy Meli Walker, for the Impulsive Behavior series at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris.
In 1999 and 2000, in collaboration with video and hologram artist Doris Vila, he composed the music for and co-designed the interactive multimedia installation, The Story Machine. It was exhibited at Animax Multimedia Theatre in Bonn, Germany, as part of Europe’s multi-site Expo 2000 Festival and at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris.
From 1986–2006 Weinstein was a member of Elliott’s Sharp’s industrial noise band, Carbon, recording and traveling widely across the USA and Europe. In Sharp’s large ensemble, Orchestra Carbon, he played sampling keyboard for two new works, Radiolaria, and SyndaKit, which were performed at The Knitting Factory and Tonic, New York.
During this time, while teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, he guest curated Music on a Long Thin Wire (2000–2001). With composer Alvin Lucier, he organized and installed this renowned work in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s Modern wing. It ran for four months. Simultaneously, he curated Dangerous Waves (2001)—featuring works by Ron Kuivila and Liz Phillips/Anney Bonney—at the Grossman Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The year 2001 would begin an intensely productive period for Weinstein. In January 2001, he produced and organized Masters of Massive Minimalism, a two night mini-festival of the music of Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt, and Jim O’Rourke at Tonic in New York City. This was released as an album on Black Truffle in 2023.
In 2002, he composed, performed music, and contributed sound design for the multimedia theater work 1,2,3, much, based on the life and work of Adolf Wolfli, with video and hologram artist Doris Vila. It was presented as part of the special events surrounding an exhibition of Wolfli’s work at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. This work was produced for television broadcast and DVD release by Downtown Community Television and Roulette, New York.
Later in 2002, in collaboration with Vila and the production team MEET, his work was included in FX Factory, a 48-channel audio installation, as part of an interactive multimedia work for Animax Multimedia Theatre in Bonn, Germany. This work was awarded the Jury Prize at Ars Electronica in September 2002, in Linz, Austria. He collaborated with Vila again, in 2005, on Paradox Beach, a children’s learning game that became a permanent installation at the Staten Island Children’s Museum.
From the mid-1990s onward, Weinstein also used his electronic expertise to work in a variety of commercial fields, including as a computer consultant, a sound designer, a production manager for the Co-op City Times, and as a multimedia content producer for Morgan Stanley, which continued until 2005.