Roberts, Megan

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(b Hempstead, NY, Oct 12, 1952). American composer, media artist, and educator. Raised in California, she studied music and theater briefly at the University of California, Santa Barbara with emma lou Diemer before pursuing music theory and composition at Humboldt State University in California (BA 1975) where she studied with Charles Moon. Roberts studied contemporary music with robert Ashley and David Behrman at Mills College (MFA 1977), focusing on electronic music and recording media. Postgraduate studies centered on video production and editing as she focused her interdisciplinary skills into multimedia composition.

Her early avant-garde works include Suite for a Small Chamber (1974), an installation piece that included dance-activated sound, and brings to mind 1930s dance experiments with the theremin. Similarly, Factory (1976) echoes the multimedia collaboration, Ballet Mécanique, of George Antheil and Fernand Léger. Roberts endeavored to create a visually percussive piece through a patchwork of video clips. Roberts garnered significant attention with ...