Previous Page (News Index).USA, December 31.
Jaron Lanier is internationally known thanks to his being one of the main, if not the most important one, pioneers of Virtual Reality. His work developing devices and technologies for this field has given him a well-deserved fame. However, his area of personal interests includes also music. In actual fact, this latter aspect is not a mere hobby to alternate with his technical work, but in it Lanier has been developing a professional career since the late seventies. What happens is, his enormous success as a predecessor of V.R. has eclypsed his musical trajectory in the eyes of the general audience, and because of this fact his musical career is unknown to a wide sector of the people who are aware of his feats in V.R.
Recently, Lanier has presented The Thinning of the Veil, a ballet with his music and a choreography by Rebecca Stenn. This artist is well known in the field of dance because of her successful trajectory and most recently because she participated as a dancer and choreographer in the movie Pictures at an Exhibition, which was awarded an Emmy.
Within the musical terrain, Lanier has stood out as a composer by merging together classicism and innovation, as well as a pianist and as a specialist in unusual musical instruments, mostly from Asia. He has performed with such artists as important as Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Vernon Reid, Barbara Higbie, and Stanley Jordan.