Norman
Lowrey is a mask maker/composer and Chair of the Music Department at Drew University,
Madison, NJ. He holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music.
He is the originator of Singing Masks. The masks incorporate flutes, reeds, ratchets and other sounding devices. They have been exhibited in East Coast museums and galleries, including the New Jersey State Museum.
His work over the last decade stems from a project that he initiated in collaboration with the Delaware Riverkeeper (Cynthia Poten) and artists like Pauline Oliveros (music), John Bromberg (performance art) and Alan Gussow (visual arts) called River Sounding: gatherings of people along the 350 mile length of the Delaware River to listen to the river in silence and create work in response to that listening.
He has presented Singing Mask ceremony/performances in such diverse locations as Plan B and Site Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Roulette and Lincoln Center in New York City, The Deep Listening Space in Kingston, New York, The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, and at the site of pictograph caves outside Billings, Montana.
Lowrey's earlier compositions for orchestra, in the rental library of Carl Fischer, Inc., have been performed throughout the U.S. and heard in radio broadcasts in Canada and Europe.