David Crowell, PhD Candidate in Composition
David Crowell is a composer and instrumentalist (saxophones, guitar) based in New York City. His compositions juxtapose intense rhythmic and melodic counterpoint with still, starkly spacious textures. Transformative experiences in the natural world are a source of inspiration, expressed through the interplay of composed and improvised passages, rhythmic and melodic layering, and a stylistic diversity that traverses the worlds of contemporary classical, jazz, and popular music. His music has been released on New Amsterdam, Innova, National Sawdust Tracks, Coviello Classics, and Skirl.
David's music has been performed at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, Lucerne Festival Spotlights Series, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dumbarton Oaks, Library of Congress, Phillips Collection, Kennedy Center REACH, Bang on a Can Summer Marathon, the London Jazz Festival, Cortona Sessions for New Music, Kultursommer Wien, Caramoor Festival, Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, American Music Festival (EMPAC), Tribeca New Music Festival, MATA Festival, National Sawdust, Merkin Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Barbes, and Joe’s Pub.
Commissioning ensembles and institutions have included A Far Cry, Argus Quartet, JACK Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, New Morse Code, NOW Ensemble, icarus Quartet, Ensemble Illyrica, Dumbarton Oaks, Da Camera Los Angeles, Tribeca New Music Festival, Arts at the Park, Boston Conservatory, University of Massachusetts, University of North Texas, University of Kentucky, and the University of Wisconsin. Notable solo artists Mak Grgic, Brian Archinal, Dan Lippel, Colin Davin, Ayano Kataoka and Ian Rosenbaum have performed his work internationally.
David’s music has been supported through composer fellowships, grants, and residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, I-Park Foundation, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Bang on a Can Summer Institute, Mizzou International Composers Festival, Duquesne University and Sacramento State University. He has presented numerous lectures on his work, including at Dumbarton Oaks, Manhattan School of Music, Duquesne University and California State University (Sacramento) where he was the featured composer at the Festival of New American Music.
As a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble (2007-16), and performing on saxophones and flute, David toured four continents during the 2012-15 revival of Einstein on the Beach, cited by Alex Ross of the New Yorker as "the music event of the year ... a creation of timeless artifice ... whose beauty blazes on." Other performance highlights are the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Steve Reich at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Bang on a Can Orchestra w/ Denardo Coleman and conducted by Awadagin Pratt, Ensemble Signal, and the Asphalt Orchestra.
David's genre-defying, composer-led band, Empyrean Atlas, has been featured numerous times on WNYC's New Sounds, and on Soundcheck for a live performance and interview with John Schaefer. As characterized by Giovanni Russonello (New York Times): "The quintet’s movements are coiled and contained, but pulsing with small, ecstatic fibrillations.” Echolocation (Poly Rush) made the New York Times Pop Music Playlist for best newly released tracks in 2017, and the rock band Wilco promoted Inner Circle as one of their favorite records of 2014.
Ongoing collaborations with other composers, performers, and visual and multimedia artists include two recent music/videography projects with cellist/singer Iva Casian-Lakos, for which David composed and produced the music and videography. Also Spirit Spout, a collaboration with Irish guitarist and composer Simon Jermyn where new composition, jazz, ambient and electronic music are all present but remain resistant to categorization. For an earlier project in conjunction with Carlito Carvalhosa’s exhibition, Sum of Days, at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), David composed and performed an extended work for multiple saxophones and electronics titled Eucalyptus, which was later released on Innova. Emmy Award winner, John Malashock, choreographed a new dance performance to Waiting in the Rain for Snow, as part of the San Diego Repertory Theatre's program Minor Fall, Major Lift, and choreographer Maria Basile created new work for David's string quartet, The Open Road, titled PathRest and performed by San Jose's sjDANCEco.