Composer Blogs@Sequenza21.com

Jacob David Sudol(b. Des Moines, Iowa 1980) writes intimate compositions that explore enigmatic phenomena and the inner nature of how we perceive sound. He recently finished his M.Mus. at McGill University and currently resides in La Jolla, CA where he is working towards a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California at San Diego with Roger Reynolds, Chinary Ung, Philippe Manoury, and Rand Steiger.

Over the last five years some of Jacob's mentors in composition have included John Rea, Denys Bouliane, Philippe Leroux, Sean Ferguson, Dan Asia, and Craig Walsh. He has also participated in master classes with Danish composer Bent Sørensen and German composer Manfred Stahnke.

During 2005-2006, Jacob was the first-ever composer-in-residence for the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble under the direction of Denys Bouliane, in collaboration with the McGill Digital Composition Studio. He has also written music for the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Contemporary Keyboard Society, percussionist Fernando Rocha, saxophonist Elizabeth Bunt, and clarinetist Krista Martynes. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, he composed the music for a collaborative dance project with choreographer Hillary Peterson, and he was the principal composer and pianist for El Proyecto de Santa Barbara, a chamber Latin jazz ensemble.

During the 2005 and 2007 Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques and 2006 MusiMars festivals Jacob was an electronic assistant for performances with Court-Circuit, Matt Haimovitz, Sara Laimon, Martin Matalon, Moritz Eggert, Manfred Stahnke, the Caput Ensemble, and the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble. These concerts were broadcast by the CBC and the European Broadcasting Union in over fifty countries throughout the world. He is currently a studio research assistant for Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds.

During his free time Jacob takes an active interest in religious phenomenology, cinema, acoustics, literature, poetry, and visual art. As a composer and performer, he always attempts to bring insights from these other fields into his work.

Contact:
jacob.sudol@gmail.com

Disclaimer: All music posted on this blog is posted out of love and the idea that for the truly great music of our time(s) to be known it must first and foremost be heard. If you like what you hear please support the artist by buying the recordings, scores, and/or encouraging the performances of the music in every way possible.

If you are the composer, performer, performing organization, artist or directly represent the composer, performer, performing organization, or artist of anything posted on this website and would like your material removed please contact me and I will happily oblige.

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10/04/2006
The Obligatory First Anniversary Edition

One year ago today I posted my first entry on my Sequenza21 blog and following certain obligatory compulsions I feel a need to write a few reflections on the last year or so.

I remember clearly that earlier in the week before my first post I watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Passion According to Andrei” for the first time, which has since proven to be a pivotal moment for me, and a few later I saw Ensemble Kore’sfirst concert of last seasonSoon after that, on Canada’s Thanksgiving I wrote the first notes of Time Fixtures.

Frankly, although I had fun writing a few posts early on -- like my early thoughts with spectralism and my happy 80th to Morton Feldman post, which I wrote while Philippe Leroux surrealy checked e-mail in the same room -- it wasn’t until I started posting mp3s blogs that I began to really have fun and feel the potential in blogging on contemporary music. If I hadn’t started posting mp3s, I probably wouldn’t have written 53 entries in this last year (a little over the “entry a week” that Jerry consistently asks for in his calls for new bloggers).

Pausing to reflect again, some of the posts that I’ve randomly remember having the most fun writing and/or having been the most revealing to myself are my first mp3 blog (which gave me the great thrill of sharing Xenakis’s out-of-print electroacoustic masterpiece “Bohor”), the blog where I compiled and contextualized a bunch of Grisey quotes, my post on what I understand to be the concept of a temporal crossfade, my first “Magical Resonance of the Piano” post (especially since “The Well Tuned Piano” has become such an important work to me since I first heard it earlier this summer), my first post on Andrei Tarkovsky (even though I’ve only really begun to appreciate Luigi Nono’s music after posting it for the first time), the two emotional contemplations on my new piece “Inner Music” for The Contemporary Keyboard Society (Scraps and A Few Thoughts on Ritual), my confessional letter of betrayal to the Piano, the second Bob Dylan post (which I wrote just after finding new significant meaning in “Visions of Joanna”), and my sad yet non-ironically joyous Ligeti memorial post.

Lastly, to be even a little bit more sentimental, I’d like to thank all my readers (regular, sporadic, and random) since you’re really what keep me doing this. After all, as much as I love listening to music, it’s being able to share it and my thoughts on it that keeps me going. With any luck (especially if I keep planning 20+ posts ahead) by this time next year I hope to have near 150 posts. I hope you’ll keep reading.

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