Black, green, red, and blue ink on manuscript paper, 8.5" x 11”.

Born in 1960, Dan Becker (OM 13) is a San Francisco-based composer whose wide-ranging achievements both exemplify and reflect a life dedicated to new music in America. Becker’s artistic work has been described as “post-minimalist” due to the strong influence of works by Terry Riley, with whom he studied, and other minimalists of the early 1960s including La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. According to the composer, "Keeping Time is in two movements. The first, marked ‘Carefully; gently’ is a meditation on simple pulsations and simple patterns. The second, marked ‘Like a Swiss watch, but fiercely’ is a more dynamic, energetic movement which explores similar patterns, but now presented in a fractured, frenetic and kaleidoscopic way.”

Listen to Becker's piece Keeping Time, commissioned by Other Minds, performed by pianist Kathleen Supové at the 13th Other Minds Festival in 2008.