Congratulations to Chelsea Komschlies (current PhD), winner of the 2020-2021 recipient of the Andrew Svoboda Prize for Orchestral Composition! We asked Chelsea a few questions to get to know more about her and the compositions she creates. Discover how she uses crossmodal correspondences in her work, where some of her references might originate, as well as some prime advice for budding composers.
As a child I loved spending hours poring over challenging puzzles. When I was about thirteen, I'd just read and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was obsessed, and I remember I was playing the melody from the "Concerning Hobbits" cue and figured, ok, it can't be that hard to figure out the chords, and I just slowly by trial and error figured it out one note at a time, then did the same with all the other cues from the trilogy.
BY BRAD TURNER
Most contemporary composers rarely hear their music performed live and often have no control over how it's presented in concert. Composer & Curator asks an artist to design a dream program around a piece they've written and explain their selections. Her eclectic selections include music by J.S. Bach, Iannis Xenakis, Evan Chambers and Alfred Schnittke, as well as songs by P.J. Harvey and Tool.
