Dan Wool is a San Francisco, California, based composer who has worked in New York, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City and Anhui China creating scores for broadcast television projects, theatrical sound installations and more than 45 feature films, including seven films for celebrated cult filmmaker Alex Cox (director of Repo Man, Sid & Nancy). He is perhaps best known as the principal composer in the soundtrack-group Pray for Rain (original members Gary Brown, Paul Trupin, James Woody). Dan has also worked extensively creating sound and music for international and domestic advertising and sound branding and also as sound-designer for short films and documentaries, including several for the BBC and Channel 4 (UK). As a music producer, and engineer, Dan has collaborated with international artists such as Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic), Philip Chevron and James Fearnley (The Pogues); Debra Harry (Blondie); and many Bay-Area artists, including All My Pretty Ones, Meredith Axelrod, essence, The Glowing Stars, Indianna Hale, Joe Lewis, The Mermen and Kally Price.

In the performing arts, Dan has been commissioned to create scores and sound-design compositions for The Architecture and Design Museum (A+D Museum), Los Angeles, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery Dance (Sketch Series),  AXIS Dance Company,  Liss Fain Dance, RAWdance, choreographer Sonsherée Giles, choreographer Alice Sheppard and Ballet de la Compasión. He has also worked as a sound engineer and sound-designer on dance-compositions with composer Beth Custer (Joe Goode, Jo Kreiter), composer Rob Reich (Circus Bella, Gaucho, Tin Hat). Dan has performed in composer Jem Finer’s “Longplayer” installation, sponsored by the Longnow Foundation at YBCA. For the years 2015 thru 2017 he’s been engaged by the U.S. Olympic Synchronized Swimming Team for ongoing compositional and musical services.

Dan has twice been nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (Izzie Award) for Outstanding Achievement in Music/Sound/Text, in 2017 for his work with Liss Fain Dance and in 2013 for his work with AXIS Dance Company. In 2014 Dan received an award from Bay Area Dance Watch (Blessay Award) for “Best Dance Soundtrack”

WINDSHIELD PERSPECTIVE May 17 - July 13 2013 at The  Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles (aplusd.org/exhibitions-future/windshield-perspective)

Windshield Perspective focuses on a short yet dense stretch of Beverly Boulevard from Normandie to Virgil. The windshield is both a lens and a shield; a screen which acts much like a magnifying glass to clarify the view and as a scrim to obscure the sight. This drive along Beverly stands for hundreds, if not thousands, of daily journeys through the city’s landscape. The exhibit is about seeing and not seeing.

Typically, our way of seeing from behind the wheel is unconscious. Beverly Boulevard, in its apparent bleakness, is easily dismissed as “nowhere,” falling into the hole in our consciousness put there by the dominant notion that much (if not all) of Los Angeles is not a city at all. Roll up the windows, crank up the sounds, and drive.

But a choreographed drive, recreated within the Museum and accompanied by an immersive sound environment, reveals the very essence of the built city: messy, disorderly, impromptu, and vital. Windshield Perspective will provide a way of seeing and a sight to be seen. The windshield is converted from scrim to lens.

ABOUT THE SOUND FOR WINDSHIELD PERSPECTIVE 

The main gallery of Windshield Perspective includes a 6.1 channel audio system playing six separate ambient sound-compositions created for the exhibition by composer Dan Wool. The pieces, derived largely from processed field-recordings made on the boulevard, reflect various themes highlighted in the exhibition. The compositions play consecutively to create a 97 minute program that plays on a continuous loop.

If you'd like more info about the composer, Dan Wool go to http://www.prayforrain.com

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