Timothy McCormack
Timothy McCormack (born 1984 Cleveland, Ohio) is a composer currently based in Chicago. His musical thought is largely informed by his conviction that an aural experience is a profoundly subjective one, and his music seeks to heighten this facet in performative contexts. Dealing with issues of perception, density, contextualisation and the performer-instrument apparatus, his music behaves obsessively, using a limited syntax to explore a highly contained territory while utilising unceasingly frenetic aural textures. Focusing on the microscopic but violent space between a finger and a string or a tongue and a reed, McCormack's music dissects the modes of sound production and the physical relationship between performer and instrument to create a complex, destabilised, and ever-changing aural terrain.
McCormack has been performed and commissioned by a number of eminent contemporary music specialists, including the ELISION Ensemble, Ensemble SurPlus, the JACK Quartet, the Formalist Quartet, Andrew McIntosh, Steve Menotti, Mark Menzies, Steve Parker and Xenia Pestova. His works have been performed throughout the world, with notable performances in Australia, Austria, England, Germany, Greece, New Zealand and throughout the United States.
McCormack is currently working towards a PhD at Huddersfield University [UK], where he studies with Aaron Cassidy and Liza Lim, and where he researches instrumental mechanism and physicality as compositional resources. He attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied with Lewis Nielson and Randolph Coleman. In 2009, he attended the Schoss Solitude Sommerakademie, where he studied with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Claus Steffen-Mahnkopf and Mark Andre. In addition, he has studied in masterclass or private lesson settings with Jason Eckardt, Olga Neuwirth, and Philippe Manoury.
Current and future projects include works being written for ELISION, the Haynes/Ballon/Knoop trio, and Richard Craig and Pontus Langendorf.
Photo © Jason Elewski