Composer Mark Applebaum is the Leland & Edith Smith Professor of Composition at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia with notable performances at the Darmstadt Sessions.

Many of his pieces are characterized by challenges to the conventional boundaries of musical ontology: works for three conductors and no players, a concerto for florist and orchestra, pieces for instruments made of junk, notational specifications that appear on the faces of custom wristwatches, amplified Dadaist rituals, silent “potential” music that stimulates listeners to infer sound, and a 72-foot long graphic score displayed in a museum and accompanied by no instructions for its interpretation.

Applebaum’s piece Aphasia—a work for an invented sign language choreographed to sound—has been called a “modern classic.” It has been performed more than 500 times by at least 200 players in some 26 countries, and has been the subject of multiple masters and doctoral theses. His work Pre-Composition, an 8-channel “tape” piece (in which eight dissociative identities debate a piece to be written), has been similarly celebrated.

Known for his elaborate and beautiful handwritten scores, in 2022 he was awarded “best-image driven book” and “best manufacturing” by the Publishers Professional Network’s 50th Annual Book Show for his lavish two-volume, retrospective artbook Prescribe/Describe. Applebaum’s TED Talk—about boredom—has been seen by more than five million viewers.

He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Fromm Foundation, Vienna Modern Festival, Paul Dresher Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Meridian Arts Ensemble, I.C.E., Chamber Music America, New Music USA, Meet the Composer, GRM (Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Paris), Banff Centre, Spoleto Festival, and others. 

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players commissioned his composition Rabbit Hole, an intricately choreographed chamber work based on obsessive page turns. Ensemble Talea commissioned the 60-minute work Venture Capital Punishment in which players alternate instrumental performance with prosaic office rituals.

Flashlight, a 50 for the Future commission by the Kronos Quartet, reimagines a Bach violin sonata in combination with assorted stage props. The JACK Quartet has championed his string quartet Darmstadt Kindergarten (also commissioned by Kronos) in which sound is remembered as it is systematically replaced by vivid hand gestures. Applebaum has also engaged in many intermedia collaborations, including neural artists, film-makers, florists, animators, architects, choreographers, and laptop DJs.  

Applebaum is an accomplished jazz pianist who has performed from Sumatra to Ouagadougou and who concertizes internationally with his father, Bob Applebaum, in the Applebaum Jazz Piano Duo. Applebaum is also an acclaimed instrument builder who has toured widely with his many electroacoustic sound-sculptures. His music appears on the Innova, Tzadik, Capstone, Blue Leaf, SEAMUS, New Focus, ChampD’Action, and Evergreen labels. He has served on the board of Other Minds and is a trustee of Carleton College.

In 2012 Applebaum convened the symposium Pedagogical Praxis and Curricular Infrastructure in Graduate Music Composition to analyze the state of the field and consider reform. He has held professorial positions at Carleton College and Mississippi State University, and taught courses in Antwerp, Santiago, Singapore, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Finland, and Oxford. In 2000 he joined the faculty at Stanford where he directs [sic]—the Stanford Improvisation Collective; received the 2003 Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching; was named a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education; and holds the aforementioned distinguished chair—the Edith & Leland Smith Professor of Composition.