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Dika Newlin

 
Artist: Dika Newlin
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Pop Artists
  • Born: November 22, 1923, Portland, OR
  • Died: July 22, 2006, Richmond, VA
  • Active: '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s
  • Genres: Avant-Garde

Biography

A former student of Arnold Schoenberg, composer and musicologist Dika Newlin later reinvented herself as a septuagenarian punk rock performance artist. Born in Portland, OR, on November 22, 1923, Newlin was named in honor of an Amazon cited in the poems of Sappho. Her academic parents soon relocated the family to East Lansing, MI, where they taught at what is now Michigan State University. By many accounts Newlin was reading at age three, playing piano at six, and composing at seven. Her "Cradle Song," completed in 1934, was performed three years later by conductor Vladimir Bakalenikoff and the Cincinnati Symphony. Newlin finished high school at age 12, and according to a 1939 New York Herald Tribune profile, hers was the highest I.Q. score in Michigan State history. After graduating MSU at 16, she entered post-graduate studies at UCLA, where she studied under Schoenberg, the Austrian-American expressionist composer famed for his pioneering 12-tone compositional method. She kept a journal during her years in Los Angeles, published in 1980 under the title Schoenberg Remembered: Diaries and Recollections (1938-76). Upon earning her doctorate in musicology from Columbia University in 1945, Newlin studied piano under Artur Schnabel and Rudolf Serkin before making her first recordings, among them Septet in Seven Movements and Piano Trio, Op. 2. She also published her first book, 1945's Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg, and went on to write three operas, a chamber symphony and concerto, a piano concerto, and myriad mixed media works. While Newlin's earliest compositions are rooted in classical structures and techniques, her post-World War II output is distinguished by its embrace of serialism, and she later expanded into electronics, group improvisation, and minimalism. Beginning in 1945 with a four-year residency at Western Maryland College, Newlin primarily supported herself via academia. In 1949, she accepted a teaching position with Syracuse University, where she remained for two years before spending the next dozen years on the faculty of Drew University. An eight-year stint at North Texas State University followed between 1965 and 1973. Among Newlin's most distinguished students are composers Roger Hannay and Michael Bates, as well as musicologist Theodore Albrecht. Upon accepting a teaching position with Virginia Commonwealth University in 1978, Newlin moonlighted for the Richmond Times-Dispatch as a music critic. The exposure to popular culture, combined with her students' enthusiasm for punk and new wave, was her gateway into rock & roll, and soon she was prowling local club stages in black leather and neon orange hair while performing original songs like "Love Songs for People Who Hate Each Other." By no means a novelty act, Newlin channeled her unique political perspective into lyrics far more provocative than the average twentysomething glue-sniffer might possibly muster. Backed by VCU students and alumni, most notably the members of the popular local band Apocowlypso, she became a local cult heroine, translating her popularity into albums (2004's Ageless Icon: The Greatest Hits of Dika Newlin) and film (the B-movie Afterbirth, directed by her longtime creative collaborator Michael D. Moore). Newlin never fully recovered from a broken hip she suffered in 2003, and her activities dwindled in the years to follow. Ten days after rejecting food and a feeding tube, she died at a manor care facility in Richmond on July 22, 2006. She was 82 years old. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Wikipedia: Dika Newlin
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Dika Newlin

Dika Newlin (November 22, 1923 – July 22, 2006) was a pianist, professor, composer and punk rock singer. She received a Ph.D from Columbia University at the age of 22. She was one of the last living students of Arnold Schoenberg, a Schoenberg Scholar and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond from 1978 to 2004. She performed as an Elvis impersonator and played punk rock while in her 70's in Richmond, Virginia.

She was featured in the documentary Dika: Murder City.

Contents

Early life

Dika Newlin was born in Portland, Oregon. Her name was chosen by her mother and refers to an Amazon in one of Sappho's poems.

Newlin was able to read the dictionary by age 3. She could play the piano by age 6 and began composing music at age 7. When she was 11 she wrote a symphonic piece, Cradle Song, that was performed three years later by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

She entered elementary school at age 5 and finished it at age 8. She graduated from high school when she was 12 and was admitted to the freshman class at Michigan State University, where her parents taught.

After graduating from Michigan State, she and her mother moved to Los Angeles so that she could study with Schoenberg at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Newlin kept a diary of her studies with Schoenberg, whom she called "Uncle Arnold." She published the diary in 1980 as Schoenberg Remembered: Diaries and Recollections (1938-76).

One entry in the diary relates how Schoenberg criticized her string quartet style as "too pianistic." After she acknowledged that she knew it wasn't the best writing, Schoenberg replied: "No, it is not the best, nor even the second best — perhaps the 50th best, yes?"

Newlin later wrote an article on Schoenberg for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Academic and musical career

Newlin, among the last surviving students of Schoenberg, was "one of the pioneers of Schoenberg research in America," according to Dr. Sabine Feisst, a professor of musicology at Arizona State University. Newlin's doctoral dissertation was published in 1947 as the book Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg.

Newlin's compositions include three operas, a piano concerto, a chamber symphony, and numerous chamber, vocal and mixed-media works.

Newlin also translated many of Schoenberg's works from German to English. Newlin herself sang in a costumed performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, which she had translated to English, in Lubbock, Texas in 1999.

Punk rocker

In her 70s a new persona emerged from Newlin: a leather-clad punk rocker with bright orange hair.

As a punk rocker, Newlin appeared in horror movies by Richmond producer Michael D. Moore. In director Tim Ritter's 1995 film Creep, Newlin played a person wearing a leather motorcycle jacket who puts poison in baby food at a supermarket.

That same year, Moore directed the documentary about Newlin titled Dika: Murder City. The title was taken from a song Newlin had performed in her solo "cabaret" act for a few years before it became a popular performance piece for her band ApoCowLypso, formed in 1985 with fellow area singer/songwriters Brooke Saunders and Manko Eponymous as well as Hunter Duke on drums. With Apocowlypso Newlin performed lead and backing vocals as well as percussion (washboard, tambourine, temple bells) in their peculiar live shows and on the cassette-only EP "Meat the Apocowlypso," the "Electronic Preacher/Richmond Flood" single, and the bootleg "Let It Was" recording. After going through over 20 bass players in their short time together, the members of Apocowlypso went their separate ways in 1988 to pursue other projects.

Miscellaneous

In 1939 the New York Herald Tribune wrote that Dika Newlin had the highest I.Q. score of any Michigan State University student at that time.

Newlin posed for a pinup calendar when she was in her 70s.

Reporters who interviewed her at home noted that a medieval suit of armor was suspended over her mattress on the floor of her bedroom.

Newlin died in Richmond, Virginia from complications of a broken arm she suffered in an accident on June 30, 2006.

References

  • Martin, Douglas. (2006, July 28). Dika Newlin, 82, Punk-Rock Schoenberg Expert, Dies. The New York Times, p. C11

External links

Further information from students of Dr. Dika Newlin


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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