I sat down recently with three of best composers I've ever had the privilege of knowing: Timothy Tharaldson, Kurt Knecht, and David von Kampen. All four of us are MusicSpoke composers, which is an innovative new distribution platform for self-published composers that Kurt Knecht and his wife have recently launched. Our conversation was very long [...]
Welcome to the first Composer on Fire Q&A episode! These Q&A episodes will be short form and will provide answers to listener-provided questions. The questions for this episode are: How is being a composer a small-business owner? Are there any shortcuts to success? Keep sending me your questions. You can send them to me Twitter [...]
Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York) and “one of the new wave of scarily smart young composers” (sequenza21.com). Her music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, pianist [...]
Steven Bramson is a professional composer who has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, and has won one Daytime Emmy Award and three ASCAP Awards. He has written music to George Lucas' Young Indiana Jones and the CBS series JAG. Bramson’s music has been played in New York City and London. Although he once [...]
Frank Felice is an eclectic composer who writes with a postmodern mischievousness: each piece speaks in its own language, and they can be by turns comedic/ironic, simple/complex, subtle/startling or humble/reverent. Recent projects of Felice's have taken a turn towards the sweeter side, exploring a consonant adiatonicism. His music has been performed extensively in the U.S. [...]
Versatile, sophisticated, and accomplished, Clarice Assad is a sought after symphonic composer, arranger, producer, jazz pianist, and vocalist of musical depth and ability. Her music embraces a wide variety of styles, including her own original musical concepts. Her music has been recorded and performed by the most prominent soloists, conductors and orchestras in the world today [...]
Paul Osterfield is a composer and Professor of Music and Middle Tennessee State University. His compositions have received performances both internationally and throughout the United States. Osterfield has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and has won Middle Tennessee State University's Outstanding Creative Arts Faculty Award, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts [...]
An accomplished composer and electric guitarist, D.J. Sparr has caught the attention of critics with his eclectic style, described as “pop-Romantic… iridescent and wondrous” (Mercury News) and “suits the boundary erasing spirit of today’s new-music world” (New York Times). The Los Angeles Times praises him as “an excellent soloist” and the Santa Cruz Sentinel says that [...]
Ben Wysocki is a drummer, song writer, and producer based in Denver, CO. He is a member of the rock band The Fray signed with Epic Records. In this interview Ben discusses with Garrett aspects of songwriting and collaboration. Website: www.thefray.net Recommended Music: The Beatles, Abbey Road Recommended Books: Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows [...]
Frank La Rocca is a composer of contemporary art music, especially sacred choral music. Trained as an academic modernist during his degree studies at Yale and U.C. Berkeley, he came to see modernism as a barrier to free musical expression and spent many years in search of a personal creative language. Drawing upon influences as [...]
