Urban Sprawl performed by Alarm Will Sound.

Urban Sprawl - Alarm Will Sound

Chris Neiner (b. 1994) is a Cleveland-based composer of contemporary classical music with colorful harmony, diverse influences, and engaging energy. Neiner’s style derives from his passion to foster collaborative works with instrumentalists. His recent collaborations include Playtime, a new work for horn, violin, and piano, commissioned by a consortium of collegiate horn professors across the United States; and Serenade for the Ghosts, a phantasmic fantasy for clarinet and string quartet, commissioned by Musical Upcoming Stars in the Classics. His work has been praised by Cleveland Classical for "incorporating the zazzy colors of the current new music dialect," and "pleasant shocks and melting cadences." Currently, Neiner serves as a composition faculty and composer-in-residence at the Aurora School of Music in Aurora, Ohio.
       
The music of Chris Neiner has appeared on programs by the Grammy award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Sinfonia, American Modern Ensemble, Boston New Music Initiative, Cochran Chamber Commissioning Project, Copper Street Brass Quintet, Red Hedgehog Trio, loadbang, Minnesota Symphonic Winds, Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, Rocky Ridge Music Center, Sewanee Summer Music Festival, faculty of the MacPhail Center for Music, and more.
       
Beyond his collaborative work as a composer, Neiner is a producer and coordinator for several music events. In 2019, he served as the associate director, composer-in-residence, and conductor for Music in the Circle, a summer concert series facilitating collaboration between international artists and students, faculty, and alumni of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Other projects include Leora’s Reverie, a concert to benefit the One Voice Foundation by American-Israeli songwriter Katia Bolotin, and New Music for Horn, a multidisciplinary project that facilitated music making between hornists, composers, conductors, and recording artists studying at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
       
Neiner has also gained a reputation as a highly sought-out arranger and copyist, working with organizations such as Reimagining Opera for Kids, the Vietnamese American Society for Creative Arts and Music (VASCAM), the Cleveland Institute of Music, and internationally recognized composer and trumpeter Anthony Plog.
       
Neiner completed a master's degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Keith Fitch. Previously, he studied composition and horn performance at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with composers Claude Baker, Aaron Travers, P. Q. Phan, Don Freund, and hornist Richard Seraphinoff. He is an alumnus of the Mostly Modern Festival, New Music on the Point Festival, RED NOTE New Music Festival, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium.

Ben Morris is a composer whose music tells unconventional stories and crosses genre boundaries. He is Assistant Professor of Composition at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an award-winning composer and new music pianist from Philadelphia, whose music has been described as "remarkably inventive" (Herald Times) and "beautifully scored, always clear and full of arresting sounds and images, held together by intuitive dramatic plans that draw the listener in" (Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer). Dr. Ciach's music is evocative and attractive in its imagery, often using intrepid instrumentation and imaginative formal concepts woven from a free and accessible tonal language. He has written a Vegetable Requiem (2012) for hand-made vegetable ocarinas (commissioned by the percussion quartet, Round Peg Square Hole), a Second Piano Sonata (2007) that runs out of notes, and Road Trip (2010) for soprano and chamber orchestra, presenting original poetry set in two ways, as if written by two different composers. Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2012), his Indiana University dissertation inspired by curiosities found in the Mütter museum, received this review after a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra: "Brian Ciach was the composer most intent upon letting his imagination run wild all over the music (hence the cabbages and dolls), but he also had the strongest sense of how to create layers of sounds" (Pioneer Press). Brian is a Lecturer of Music Theory and Composition at San Jose State University and Assistant Director and Instructor of Music at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose. His compositions are published by Potenza Music. 

      In 2011, Brian earned a doctorate in music composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he also studied music theory and electronic music. He was the recipient of two Dean's Prizes in music composition at IU in 2009 and 2010 for Mölna Elegy and his orchestral dissertation, Collective Uncommon. He also received the Presser Music Award at IU in 2008, which funded travel to the premieres of two of his compositions in Berlin, Germany and Pavia, Italy. He studied composition with P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Don Freund, John Gibson (electro-acoustic), Jeffrey Hass (electro-acoustic), and Sven-David Sandström at Indiana University. Additional studies were with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin in the summers of 2008 and 2009.  Brian studied privately with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Richard Wernick from 2004 to 2006. Ciach has two concurrent Master's degrees in piano performance and composition and a Bachelor's degree in piano performance from Temple University, where he studied piano with Charles Abramovic, Lambert Orkis, Harvey Wedeen, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and composition with Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, and Richard Brodhead. 

For more information, please visit: sigh-ackmusic.org

EDUCATION: Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (DM, Composition, 2007-2011), Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music (MM, Piano Performance, MM, Composition, 2002-2004), Temple University Esther Boyer College of Music (BM, Piano Performance, 1998-2002), Delaware County Community College (AA, Liberal Arts, 1995-1998)

EMPLOYMENT: Instructor of Music Theory, Santa Clara University, Assistant Director, Instructor of Music (piano, improvisation, music theory, and composition), The Hunter School of Music, Music Engraver at the Subito Music Corporation

INTERESTS: cooking, chess, biking, running, swimming

Tess is a singer songwriter from Cabinteely, Dublin, living and writing between London and Europe.  This page has mainly demos from music in progress as well as in-production 'Stanzas For Music'.  More of Tess' music is on www.soundcloud.com/tesscallaghan

The music of Clint Needham has been described as “wildly entertaining” and “stunning, brilliantly orchestrated” by the New York Times, as well as “well-crafted and arresting... riveting” by the Herald Times. He has served as the Mellon Composer/Educator in Residence and Music Alive: New Partnerships Composer in Residence with the Albany Symphony, and the Knight Foundation Composer in Residence with the Akron Symphony. 

Clint has received commissions and performances by leading orchestras across the country including the Minnesota Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Omaha Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Spokane Symphony, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and the New York Classical Players, among others. Chamber ensembles including Alarm Will Sound, the American Brass Quintet, Chicago Pro Musica, Da Capo Chamber Players, Factory Seconds Brass Trio, Fifth House Ensemble, Hawthorne String Quartet, Hub New Music, and the President’s Own Marine Band Brass Quintet have given performances of his music across the country as well as in Europe, Brazil, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Australia. 

Clint’s music has been recognized with numerous awards including the Barlow Prize, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Prize, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the William Schuman Prize/BMI Composer Award, and the Heckscher & Walter Beeler Prizes from Ithaca College. He has also been the recipient of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s Project 440 Commission and the Underwood New Music Commission from the American Composers Orchestra. 

As an educator, Clint serves as Composer in Residence and Professor of Composition at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. He holds degrees from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music (BM) and Indiana University (MM, DM). He has also studied at the Aspen Music Festival as a Susan and Ford Schumann composition fellow and at the Wellesley Composers Conference. 

Clint’s music is published by the Theodore Presser Company, Manhattan Beach Music, and Triplo Press. Recordings of his works can be found on the Summit Records, New Focus Recordings, Beauport Classics, and Mark Masters labels as well as on recordings by the United States Air Force Band of the West, trumpeter Jack Sutte, and the American Composers Orchestra Digital Release Series.

https://www.clintneedhamcomposer.com

www.instagram.com/diegothefuego 
Come say hi

Picture: Bronze Age Rock Carvings at "Heaven´s Sacrificing Grove" (Himmelstalund), Norrkoping, Sweden (Michael Johansson 2023). 

Dan and I have been writing songs since 1977. All songs are written the guitar based way with an acoustic guitar, pen and paper, even if the secondary construction is made with digital tools and programmes.  
Now it is the first time that we will get a bit more official. We do not have any particular genre, because we believe that the feel of the melody will lead you to the genre. So after a while you will hear Pop, Rock, Country, Crossover, Symphonic Rock, Ethnic, Ballads and more.
All instruments are digital (mostly VST-instruments). I do not know if that is good or bad, but it is the only way for us to make this happen.
My favourite bands/artists are QUEEN (early albums),Roxy Music, Styx, Barclay James Harvest, Supertramp, David Bowie, Babe Ruth, Pavlov´s Dog. Procol Harum,  Echo and the Bunnymen and Crowded House. Amongst individual artists I love Clifford T. Ward, Rupert Holmes, Al Stewart and Chris De Burgh.
Dan is inpired of Eagles and Pink Floyd and many of the hardrock bands from the seventies.
Music production: Cubase 12 Pro (Steinberg), Waveform 9 (Tracktion), Band-in-a-Box 2023 (PG Music), T-Racks 5 Mastering Suite (IK Multimedia)
Some VST-plugins: Sampletank 3 and Miroslav Philharmonik 2 (IK Multimedia), Real Guitars (Music Labs), Amplitube 3 (IK Multimedia)
 /Michael J

PS! WE HAVE GOT MORE THAN 130 SONGS