Ralph Lewis: Composer

Hey everyone! I’m heading to WGXC this weekend to start my residency there. Our first event is a Radio Monster Party, where we’ll talk to local kids about electroacoustic music and radio through the lens of dreaming up and designing monster sounds. Tune in and join in the fun! 🙂

After a wonderful first year at University of Illinois with so many great times, new friends, and the opportunities to explore new ideas, I’m about to start a really fun summer.

In June, I’ll be attending the Fresh Inc Festival at University of Wisconsin-Parkside where some great musicians I’m just beginning to get to know will premiere social pressures on the moon for flute, oboe, bass clarinet, soprano sax, and trombone.

In July, I’ll be heading to New York to do an artist residency at Wave Farm, WGXC 90.7-FM and will be broadcasting the premiere of Penelope’s Endless Book of Magic, a radio serial opera I am working on.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out this series I did for Wave Farm early this year! It’s called Drive to the Edge.

Under a grey sky, Celestial in the Dusk, my lumbering carillon piece, premiered on University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s McFarland Carillon as part of a concert Dong Ryul Lee organized today.Thanks Dong Ryul!

While I had imagined the last gasp of a sunlight as the setting of it (because we are not allowed to play carillon before 5 pm) this worked too.

Other composers on the concert were M.O. Abbott, Byungjin Kim, Ming-ching Chiu, Kyle Shaw, and Stephen Taylor. I really liked what I heard–some very clever solutions for dealing with this quirky, beautiful instrument. I hope we can do another one of these concerts in the Fall.

Student composer Workshop at Urbana-Champaign! #newmusic #midwest #tour pic.twitter.com/jyTLVYEgAl

— ensemble mise-en (@ensemblemiseen) April 8, 2016

About a week ago, I had the pleasure of getting to meet ensemble mise-en. What an exciting experience. In this photo, they were reading my new piece critical band-aid.

Working with ensemble mise-en was one of the highlights of the decade for me. Being in the room with them that Friday felt transcendent. Besides being prepared to engage with me as a composer and with the piece I had shared, they created this aerodynamic, frictionless feeling in the room as they played and discussed critical band-aid that suprised and delighted me. What a compelling working environment. Thank you ensemble mise-en!

I also want to give big thank yous to Steve Taylor and Kyle Shaw for curating this opportunity to work with this wonderful group and to my composition professor Erik Lund (seen in the background of the photo) for being a great sounding board at each step of the process of this piece.

The fourth and last movement of Drive to the Edge is premiering on April 7th on WGXC. What a blast it has been!

Here is the third movement, in case you missed it.

It’s an exciting week! All Score Urbana’s Kickstarter has been 100% funded with 18 days left to go! Thank to everyone who donated to the Kickstarter or shared about this program for this community.

With this money we will be able to run the workshop and provide a website with multi-media documentation so we can better explain and share the upcoming workshops this Fall with Urbana, Illinois residents.

I will post a link to the program’s website sometime in late May but for now check out the Kickstarter itself:  if we reach $320 before our campaign ends we will upgrade the planned website to a Squarespace-quality website. Any funds beyond $320 will go toward the Fall workshop budget.

Thank you for helping create a real platform we can use to share the program with the community. This is going to be such a special time!

All Score Urbana’s Kickstarter has officially launched!!!!

If you can, help us out and support community-based arts in Urbana, Illinois!