This is a demonstration track of Landscape with Changes (2021), an electroacoustic sound installation.
Photo by Anqi Liu
*** This piece is binaurally spatialized - please listen with headphones ***

Landscape with Changes - demo audio (binaural)

Jeu-Parti (2016) for piano and electronics

Performed by Dimitris Paganos Koukakis, piano
Recorded at the Conrad Prebys Music Center, April 2019 
Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez, recording engineer
Electronics realized and performed by the composer

Jeu-Parti

Adrift (2021) for flute, piano, and electronics

Commissioned by Duo Axis
Performed by Duo Axis at UC San Diego, May 2022
Zach Sheets, flutes; Wei-Han Wu, piano

Adrift

Three Reflections (2020-21) for solo piano and synthesizer
Commissioned by Shaoai Ashley Zhang 
Performed by Shaoai Ashley Zhang at UC San Diego, May 2022

Three Reflections

Chamber Concerto (2022) in one movement 
for nine players and electronics

Recording of the premiere at UC San Diego, May 2022

Michael Jones & Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion
Shaoai Ashley Zhang & Kyle Adam Blair, keyboards
Ilana Waniuk & Pauline Ng, violins
Alex Taylor, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Matthew Kline, double bass
Steven Schick, conductor

Chamber Concerto

Excerpt of Chamber Concerto (2022) in one movement
for nine players and electronics

Recording of the premiere at UC San Diego, May 2022

Michael Jones & Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, percussion
Shaoai Ashley Zhang & Kyle Adam Blair, keyboards
Ilana Waniuk & Pauline Ng, violins
Alex Taylor, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Matthew Kline, double bass
Steven Schick, conductor

Chamber Concerto (excerpt)

An Elemental Music (2022) for orchestra
Commissioned by the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus
Performed by the La Jolla Symphony, cond. Michael Gerdes, March 2023

I. Crisp, bright
II. The Cold Song. Desolate, icy (after an aria by Henry Purcell)
III. Dark, mysterious — As in the first movement — Presto

An Elemental Music

scamper (2023) for ambisonic fixed media

This is a binaural rendering — please listen with headphones

For other decodings of the ambisonic spatialization (stereo, quad, octophonic, etc.), or for the ambisonic source file, please feel free to contact me

scamper (binaural)

Religion (2015) for vocal ensemble

Performed by EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, cond. James Weeks, at Milton Court, London, March 2015
Text by Wallace Stevens

Religion

O Clarissima (2015) for viola and piano

After plainchant melodies by Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
Performed by Waibun Chan and Dylan Perez at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, May 2015

O Clarissima

Soif (2019) for solo violin

Dedicated to and performed by violinist Miranda Cuckson at UC San Diego, May 2019

Soif

Bloom (2019) for string quartet

Commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and performed by the Flux Quartet at the New Mexico Museum of Art, August 2019
Photo by the composer (Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, spring 2019)

Bloom

calling, crying (2016) for mezzo-soprano and string quartet

Performed by Chloë Schaaf, Stuart McDonald, Jacques Gadway, Lucas Goodman, and Sarah Schoeffler, Bard College "First Songs" concerts at National Sawdust, curated by Dawn Upshaw and Shawn Jaeger, April 2019

Text by Carl Sandburg ("Lost," 1914)
Photo by Jill Steinberg

calling, crying

Cantus (2019) for large ensemble

Performed by Palimpsest, cond. Steven Schick, at the Conrad Prebys Presidential Chair Concert, UC San Diego, January 2020

Teresa Díaz de Cossio, flutes
Juliana Gaona-villamizar, oboe/English horn
Madison Greenstone, clarinets
Gleb Kanasevich, clarinets
Benjamin Jaber, horn
Elyse Lauzon, horn
Berk Schneider, trombone
Garrett Mendelow, percussion
Fiona Digney, percussion
Dimitris Paganos Koukakis, piano
Mari Kawamura, keyboard
Kathryn Hatmaker, violin
Ilana Waniuk, violin
Adam Neeley, viola
Peter Ko, cello
Matthew Kline, double bass
Steven Schick, conductor

Photo by Anqi Liu

Cantus

Music for Car Radios (2020) for stereo fixed media
Composed in December 2020

Music for Car Radios

Composer Alex Stephenson (b. 1990) has recently collaborated with artists including the New Fromm Players, the Flux Quartet, Duo Axis, HOCKET, and the La Jolla Symphony. He has received significant commissions from the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Breckenridge Music Festival, and the Royaumont Voix Nouvelles Festival, and his music has also been featured at the Tanglewood Music Center, the ISCM World New Music Days, the Composers Conference, and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, among others. His work has been praised as "masterfully orchestrated" and exhibiting "sonic beauty" (San Diego Union-Tribune).

Alex’s music stems from a deep-rooted lyrical impulse, combined with a keen interest in the ways we perceive sound and in musical repertoires both old and new. With each project, he seeks to intertwine these diverse influences in novel ways, curating sonic worlds that feel simultaneously fresh and familiar. He works in a variety of contexts, from the acoustic to the electronic, from concert music to sound installations and interdisciplinary collaborations.

His string quartet Bloom—which was selected to represent the United States at the 2021 ISCM World New Music Days and was a prizewinner in competitions through the League of Composers, Hausmann Quartet, and Charles Ives Music Festival—places vigorous, passionate bursts of energy into dialogue with sonorous, gently pulsating harmonies. His alternately playful and meditative Chamber Concerto, exploring new methods of combining microtonal synthesizers and electronics with an acoustic ensemble, was premiered by colleagues at UC San Diego under the baton of Steven Schick. Most recently, the San Diego Union-Tribune described Alex’s orchestral work An Elemental Music—commissioned and premiered by the La Jolla Symphony under conductor Michael Gerdes—as a “wonderful new work” that “could be easily programmed by any American orchestra.”

A committed educator, Alex currently teaches theory and analysis, composition, orchestration, and electroacoustic music as an instructional assistant professor at Illinois State University. Previously, as an instructor at UC San Diego, he received the university-wide Barbara and Paul Saltman Excellent Teaching Award.

Alex’s recent music analysis article, on harmony and politics in contemporary music, appears in Music Theory Online.

Alex holds a Ph.D. (2023) in composition from the University of California San Diego. He was a US-UK Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar (2014-15), studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, and earned a master's degree (2017) from the Eastman School of Music and a bachelor's degree (2012) from the University of Chicago.

Alex Stephenson

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