Cellist: Mariel Roberts

"thoughts on imperceptibility" aims to let listeners "hear" frequencies that are below and above what is normally perceptible.

Composed for the 2020 Online Cortona Sessions

thoughts on imperceptibility

Kevin Kay (b. 1995) is a composer interested in the physicality of sound. Working in just intonation, his music is concerned with the structuring and understanding of rational tonal structures through framework based on the physical, mathematical, and psychoacoustic properties of sound. Accordingly, his work is informed by the sensation and perception of sound as a physical phenomenon. Through an obsession with patterns and numbers in music, such mathematically oriented harmonic spaces often become entangled with temporal processes. Recurring threads in his body of work include the notions of duality and symmetry.

Kevin’s music has been performed by ensembles and musicians such as Spektral Quartet, Imani Winds, soloists from Ensemble intercontemporain, Divertimento Ensemble, Density512, PinkNoise Ensemble, Ghost Ensemble, The City of Tomorrow, MotoContrario Ensemble, and the Brouwer Trio, among others. As a clarinetist, he performs his own solo works. Festivals and academies that have performed his music include: the Cortona Sessions for New Music (2022, 2020 Cortona Prize winner), 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), the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival (2017), the Valencia International Performing Arts Summer Festival (2016), and the Charlotte New Music Festival (2016). Kevin has been in residence at Arts Letters and Numbers (2023) and the Hambidge Center for the Arts (2022).

Currently, Kevin is a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University. He holds 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, Nirmali Fenn, Sam Pluta, and Sophia Serghi, among others.