As Henry Plotnick begins his freshman year at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, he has lots of material for the “What I Did Last Summer” essay.
The 14-year-old walked a tightrope at Camp Winnarainbow and rode roller coasters at amusement park camp. He read Oliver Sacks’ autobiography, snapped outdoor photos, pedaled his bike and listened to recordings of early American folk music.
And over 10 days, he carved out time to compose and record a suite of electronic music organized in nine five-minute sections.
The beat goes on for Plotnick, a recent graduate of San Francisco’s Brandeis School who celebrated his bar mitzvah just a year ago at Or Shalom Jewish Community, where his mother teaches music in the religious school.
He has released two well-received solo albums of looping, dramatically building electronic music. Think minimalist compositions à la Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley, but improvised, recorded and tweaked by Plotnick while seated on his bedroom floor with an electronic keyboard, laptop computer and mixing board.
Plotnick’s debut album, “Fields” (2013, Holy Mountain Records), consists of pieces he calls fields, which he numbers 1-9. In the online Stereo Embers magazine, he describes the music as “a delightfully bizarre electronic looping symphony for the very patient.”
“Fields” was released as a double album on clear vinyl, which pleases his parents, underground filmmaker Danny Plotnick and singer and teacher Alison Faith Levy. The album made two critics’ best-album lists in the Village Voice’s 2013 Pazz and Jop polls, tied overall with a recording by trumpeter Dave Douglas and ahead of releases by singers Stephen Stills and Iris Dement.
Plotnick’s second album, “blue fourteen” (2014, Blue Tapes), is a set of six dense, sometimes joyful looping pieces with an emphasis on percussion. On its website, the record company, which released the album on cassette, says that the compositions “sound pretty great now, but just imagine when Blue Tapes has the finances to get orchestras performing Henry’s stuff!”
A Stereo Embers review calls the “blue fourteen” album “great avant-garde music, great synth pop, great dance music, and great classical music … Henry Plotnick continues to astound.” Wondering Sound online magazine calls Plotnick “the most original new voice in minimalist composing.”
In addition, the British magazine WIRE offered a free download of “Wapiti” from “blue fourteen” and profiled Plotnick in its Nov. 6, 2014 issue.
Lounging barefoot on a couch in his family’s San Francisco home after a “very tiring” day at amusement park camp, Plotnick seemed blasé about the critical acclaim.
“I don’t consider myself to be hugely talented,” he said, but he admitted to having a good musical ear and improvisational skills, plus an affinity for computerized music-editing tools. “It just sort of comes naturally to me.”
Thoughtful and friendly with curly black hair, Plotnick has been writing minimalist and electronic music since age 7, but said “things picked up” at age 11, when he received a copy of Garage Band software, which allows him to record many parts of a piece separately, and then manipulate and combine them.
He has performed solo shows, improvising on keyboard and loop machine for 45 to 60 minutes. He enjoys performing, he said, “but if it was really important, I’d perform more.” Meanwhile, he has been studying classical piano since age 5 and plans to specialize in that discipline at high school. He says that his compositions reflect a classical influence in such areas as chord progressions.
“I’m sure it influences me more than I think,” he said. “More of the influences I get come from music I listen to,” meaning jazz, electronic (especially Brian Eno), indie rock and folk. He admitted a diminishing patience for some of the minimalist music he used to devour.
His parents recall that even as a baby Henry was attuned to music, and as a toddler was obsessed with the recordings of avant-garde folk guitarist John Fahey. Levy recalls 3-year-old Henry visiting a record store with his grandmother, who swears that the tot correctly identified the background music as a Fahey recording, which he then discussed from his stroller with a clerk.
“He’s simultaneously naive and sophisticated,” said Danny Plotnick. “That’s what he wants to talk about. That’s just who he is.”
Both parents encourage their son’s interests, but they don’t push him to compose and carefully consider each performance offer for age-appropriateness and how it fits his schedule. Levy, who also teaches music at JCCs in Palo Alto and San Francisco, is well aware of the demands of performance, as she herself performs solo and as a member of the duo McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Prompted by his mother to mention his love of science, Plotnick explained that he isn’t sure whether he’ll pursue his scientific interests professionally or work in music. “I don’t know. I’m only 14,” he said. “As you grow, you develop tastes and interests. I have my different interests.”