"reaching" for string quartet and electronics
M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago

Premiered 4/5/2018 by Spektral Quartet (Clara Lyon, Maeve Feinberg, Doyle Armbrust, Russell Rolen)
Cover art: Matt Omahan (www.mattomahan.com)

This piece is about striving for something - a goal, an aim, a success, etc. - and subsequently failing. However, it is not about the failure; rather, it is about the repetition of trying, attempting, reaching.

reaching, for string quartet and electronics

Kevin Kay (b. 1995) is a composer interested in the physicality of sound. He is furthermore interested in expressing the physical nature of our reality abstractly through music. Working in just intonation, his music is concerned with the sensation and perception of sound as a physical phenomenon through framework based on the physical, mathematical, and psychoacoustic properties of sound. Through an obsession with patterns and numbers in music, such mathematically oriented harmonic spaces often become entangled with temporal processes.

Kevin’s music has been performed by ensembles and musicians such as the Copland House Ensemble, Ensemble Linea, Spektral Quartet, Imani Winds, soloists from Ensemble intercontemporain, The Van Swietens, Divertimento Ensemble, zone expérimentale basel, Density512, PinkNoise Ensemble, Ghost Ensemble, and MotoContrario Ensemble, among others. As a clarinetist, he performs with red panel.

Festivals and academies that have performed his music include: the Copland House CULTIVATE emerging composers institute (2024), impuls Academy (2023), CIEL Academy (2023), the Cortona Sessions for New Music (2020 Cortona Prize winner, 2022, 2023), the International Workshop for Young Composers (2020), IRCAM’s ManiFeste Academy (2018-19), Les Ecoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau (2018), New Music on the Point (2017), the Yarn/Wire Institute (2017), and the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival (2017). Kevin has been in residence at Arts Letters and Numbers (2023) and the Hambidge Center for the Arts (2022).

Kevin resides in Berlin where he stayed following support from the DAAD-Stiftung (Respekt & Wertschätzung Scholarship) to pursue composition and artistic research at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Marc Sabat. He holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University, an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, and a B.S. in physics and music from the College of William and Mary. He has studied with Margaret Schedel, Sam Pluta, and Sophia Serghi, among others.