Dr. Weber has a Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master of Music from Yale School of Music, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He has written for orchestra, band, mixed ensembles, choirs, and a variety of solo instruments over the years. While he was in Iowa his music was performed by the University of Iowa Center for New Music and he premiered band works with Columbus High School and Hudson High School. He also founded and directed Iowa Creative Music, through which he gave music lessons across Eastern Iowa, using music and materials created especially for his students. He continues to sell his student sheet music online at www.iowacreativemusic.com .
Recently, while still in Iowa, Marc began performing as a solo guitarist; he appeared regularly at various coffeehouses, restaurants, and farmers’ markets in the towns he traveled to for lessons. He was a featured performer at the Clear Lake Harvest festival, the Charles City Arts Festival, at the KUNI (a local NPR station) Wine and Tulips Festival, and also did stints for the Waterloo Center for the Arts and for the UNI School of Art.
In March of 2008 Marc moved back to California, where he was born and raised, and has just started getting some local exposure. He plays regularly at the Egg Plantation and at Persia Restaurant in Santa Clarita, Om Fusion of Thai in Oak View, Farmer and Cook in Ojai, Arnie’s Ristorante Italiano in Tujunga, at Lovebirds Café and at Sitar Indian Cuisine in Pasadena, and at Enterprise Fish Company and at Coastal Winery in Santa Barbara.
His live music is influenced by everything from classical, jazz, folk, rock, and blues to music from the Near and Far East. In addition to his ‘fixed’ compositions he loves to improvise, and has found some unique solutions to the problem of performing alone. “I am trying to bring more and more counterpoint into my improvising – it is easy enough to write that sort of thing out, but more challenging to do ad lib.” Marc often employs open tunings, creating a fluid and dynamic bass drone underneath his solo lines. He also uses a digital delay system, creating canons (one line of music ‘copying’ another line) or setting up a call-and-response effect. “As a musician, I love bouncing ideas off of others and in a solo setting I can use some simple technology to transform aspects of myself into the ‘other’ – I send out a ‘call’ and then try to react to it; just the right amount of echo allows things to return a bit, and sometimes the effect can be pretty amazing.”
Marc is available for lessons and performances, and may be reached by phone at 661-993-2540 or by email at marcweber@mchsi.com and his website is www.iowacreativemusic.com .