Larry Polansky

Larry Polansky was a prolific composer, multi-instrumentalist, and educator who wrote and arranged many works for a variety of instrumentations. In 1984, he and his wife, composer and ethnomusicologist Jody Diamond, co-founded and co-directed the composer's collective Frog Peak Music. He was a widely published music theorist who co-wrote HSML, or Hierarchical Music Specification Language, with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom, as well as other computer software. In 2001, Polansky and Judith Tick issued the critical edition of Ruth Crawford Seeger's The Music of American Folk Song. The 2010 album, The World's Longest Melody, contained his compositions spanning from the 1970s to 2000s. His recording, The Theory of Impossible Melody, features the use of HMSL. He died on May 9, 2024, in Santa Cruz.