Thanks for visiting. 
What's new:  I have completed my violin sonata. It is posted first in line to your left.  My new symphony, "Symphony for Chamber Orchestra," is posted and waiting for you.  rjb

Scores and parts for many of my works are available from my publisher Creative Spirit Music Publications. Go to  https://www.creativespiritonline.com and select "Robert John Brooks." There, you can also follow the score while listening to a recording.

My music is fully notated and is intended for live performance by live musicians.

After completing my doctorate in composition in 1979 from UNT, I took 30 years off from composing to join the computer software revolution as a software engineer.  In 2010 I began composing again and have not stopped. So, I find myself beginning (restarting?) a composition career rather late in life...but that's OK.  Most of the works posted here were written since 2010. 

Thanks for visiting.

Douglas Boyce writes chamber music that draws on Medieval and Renaissance traditions and modernist aesthetics, building rich rhythmic structures that shift between order, fragmentation, elegance, and ferocity.  His approach is deeply historical and broadly philosophical.  Many of his works have an direct historical touchstone, such as his  Etude on 'Pymalion qui moult subtilz estoit' (A Book of Etudes, Quire 4, No. 1) which features quotations of and elaborations on music from 15th century Cyprus, or La Deploration for clarinet, violin, and cello, which couples Josquin's lament on the death of Ockeghem with works of his own teacher Robert Suderburg, synthesizing jazz and Renaissance approaches. Other works draw on sources from antiquity, such as the string quartet Alcyone, a partially spoken setting of a tale of Ovid's Metamorphoses, or Tethys, a violin concerto which links the sea-goddess to geological time and tectonic change.
Literature and philosophy are also significant points of articulation: The Winter Journey, a current project commissioned from the ensemble Yarn|wire, is based on a short story by George Perec; the story itself  takes the form of a 19th century fairytale of memory and loss, and so the new composition will involve transformation of the French and German art-song tradition of the 19th and early 20th century. A song cycle focused on settings of American poets (Jorie Graham, BJ Ward, Wallace Stevens) entwines with the poems fragments from philosophers (James, Aristotle, Husserl, Bergson). The piano trio 'Fortuitous Variations' draws upon the language of William James and C.S. Peirce in inspiration, organization, character markings, and movement titles. This approach and the works themselves connect to many aspects of the scholarship in the humanities, including history, anthropology, literary studies, and philosophy. 
His works have been praised many times in the press.  Regarding his Quintet “l’homme armé”, Allan Kozinn wrote “he couches [the medieval melody] in such thoroughly modern scoring that the ear is lured to other things, including the juxtaposition of eerie string writing with playful material for the clarinet and piano, or the lively interplay among all five instruments.” (The New York Times March 12, 2005.) Regarding A Book of Songs (2006), the Stephen Brookes wrote “[they] can only be described as drop-dead beautiful. Easily the most captivating works on the program, these songs of love and death are extraordinarily well written and insightful.” (The Washington Post May 23, 2006)  Regarding La Déploration, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote that "...the violinist, cellist... and clarinetist... spread out throughout the crypt. Against vaporous harmonics and ghostly fragments of Renaissance music played by the strings, [a] warm, clear clarinet announced itself as very much alive as it sashayed in and out of blues territory and laughed in the face of their mournful keening." (The New York Times May 17, 2015.)
He has been awarded the League of Composers ISCM Composers Award (2005), the Salvatore Martirano Prize (2006), and the Robert Avalon Prize (2010), and a Fromm Commission (2012). He is a MacDowell Fellow in Winter 2017, and an Avaloch Music Farm Fellow in Fall 2017. His music has been performed by  counter)induction, Aeolus Quartet, Inscape Chamber Orchestra, Redlight Music, Dan Lippel, Robert Baker, Trio Cavatina, Edge Ensemble/Contemporary Music Forum (DC), pianists Ieva Jokubaviciute (Shenandoah University), Alice Belem (State University of Minas Gerais), and Ning Yu; cellists Elise Pittenger (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and Schuyler Slack (Richmond Symphony) and Lori Barnett (George Washington University); and clarinetists David Jones (Washington National Opera), Benjamin Fingland (Dorian Winds).
He is a founding member, curator, and composer-in-residence of counter)induction, a composer/performer collective active in the New York region (www.counterinduction.com).

Composer and conductor, Paolo Longo was born in Trieste (Italy) in 1967; he studied piano, composing and conducting and graduated with highest honors in 1990.
Composer of mainly chamber, solo and vocal works that have been awarded in several International composition competitions: Edvard Grieg Competition in Oslo (2003), ANDm Competition in Tarragona (2004), ISCM-Miami (2006), Renée B. Fisher Composer Awards in New Haven (2005), Salvatore Martirano Award in Chicago (2005), Chamber Music Composition Competition in Tokyo (2005), Académie de Lutèce in Paris (2006), Prix Reine Marie José in Geneva (2005), Egidio Carella International Competition in Piacenza (2003), Città di Barletta International Competition (2004), Premio Valentino Bucchi in Rome (2003), Musica Domani Prize in Rochester (2012), and many others.
His music has been regularly performed and broadcast in more than 40 countries. Main performances include: Festival Lille 3000, Gourmandises Musicales in Ecquevilly, Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing, Festival Commixtus in Angoulême (France), Oslo Grieg Festival (Norway), Concerts de midi in Bruxelles, Logos Concert Hall in Gand (Belgium), Festival November Music in Hertogenbosch (The Netherlands), Piano City, Suono/Immagine and Festival Rebus in Milano, Mittelfest in Cividale, Festival delle Nazioni in Rome, Bellagio Festival (Italy), New Music – Miami ISCM Festival, Composer's Voice in New York, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana- Champaign, Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn (USA), SALT New Music Festival in Victoria (Canada), London New Wind Festival (UK), Soirées musicales d'hiver (Pazardjik, Bulgaria), International Review of Composers (Belgrade, Serbia), Hopetoun Alpha in Auckland, Adam Concert Room in Wellington, The Southern Ballet Theatre in Christchurch (New Zealand), Studio Ernest-Ansermet in Geneva (Switzerland), Jaunais Rigas Teatris in Riga (Latvia), Fundación Eutherpe (León), Universidad de Sevilla (Spain).
His music is published by Sconfinarte (Rovato - Italy), Symétrie (Lyon - France), RAI Trade (Rome - Italy), Wirripang (Wollongong, Australia), La mà de Guido (Barcelona, Spain) and Bèrben (Ancona, Italy); his music has been the subject of workshops and stages in Spain, Israel, Iran, Italy and Australia. Some of his compositions have been the imposed works at several international music competitions.
As a conductor, Paolo Longo devoted himself mainly to the contemporary music repertoire; he has led ensembles and orchestras in Italy, France, Switzerland, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Uzbekistan, in chamber, symphonic and opera productions. He has premiered more than 150 works by composers such as Gilbert Amy, Bruno Bettinelli, Aldo Clementi, Giorgio Colombo Taccani, Azio Corghi, Pascal Dusapin, Hans Werner Henze, Michael Levinas, Robert W. Mann, Giacomo Manzoni, Luca Mosca, Ennio Morricone, Francesco Pennisi, Alessandro Solbiati, Ivan Vandor, and many others.

Composer and double bass player Adriano Orrù was born in Nuoro, Italy in 1958 and now lives and works in Cagliari. He devotes his time to jazz, radical improvisation, chamber music. He also works as a music teacher.

Orrù has collaborated with artists such as Giancarlo Schiaffini, Paolo Fresu, Tony Oxley, Lenka Zupkova, AN MOKU, Paulo Chagas, Mauro Sambo, Joao Pedro Viegas, Guy-Frank Pellerin, Maria Do Mar, Luiz Rocha, Samuel Hällkvist, François Choiselat, Stefan Schimdt, Mia Zabelka, Ettore Fioravanti, Roberto Cipelli, Marco Tamburini, Tino Tracanna, Maria Radich, Andy Gravish, Tim Hodkinson, Marcello Magliocchi, Victor Nubla, Simon Balestrazzi, Silvia Corda, Takatsuna Mukai, Henning Frimann, Renato Ciunfrini, Guro Skumsnes Moe, Håvard Skaset, Angelo Contini, G.P. Campus, Corrado Altieri, Billy Sechi, Monica Serra, Mauro Cossu, Clara Murtas, White Noise Generator, Stella Veloce, Sebastiano Meloni, Alessandro Garau, Stefano Figliola, Alessandro Olla, Paolo Angeli, Manuel Attanasio, Variable Geometry Orchestra, Moex Ensemble, Elia Casu, Mauro Usai, Paolo Sanna, Roberto Pellegrini, Enrica Spada, Carla Onni, Giacomo Calabrese, Sara Marasso, Mario Faticoni, Paula Gimeno, Yali Herbet, Pedro Sena Nunes, Tonino Casula.
He has recorded for Splasc(h), Digitalis Purpurea, Comar23, TiConZero, Big Round Records, Setola di maiale, Magick With Tears, LaBèl, Pan y Rosas, Endtitles, Creative Sources.
Reviews of his work have appeared in Down Beat, Il Manifesto, Musica Jazz, Cadence, Jazzit, Cuadernos de Jazz, All About Jazz, L’Unione Sarda, La Nuova Sardegna, Double Bassist, Jazzword, One Final Note, Flash Art, and on Radio 3 RAI.
He has performed at events such as Isole che parlano, Time in Jazz, Ai confini tra Sardegna e Jazz, Concerts of the Nuoro Jazz Seminary, Jazz d’autore, Cerisano Jazz, Varese in Jazz, Jazz in Sardinia, Veneto Jazz, San Teodoro Jazz, Sardegna Arte Fiera, Musica sulle Bocche, The Barcelona Lem Festival, Senni Jazz, Isole che parlano, The Signal Festival, Festival Spaziomusica, MIA Festival (Portugal), Creative Fest (Lisbon), Marathon Der HochKulturen (Zurich), Clockstop Fest (Noci), Free Flow Fest (Irsina), Tempo al Tempo (Bruxelles).

ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier): 0000 0005 2049 5992
Registered composer – SAZAS / CISAC member

Paolo Longo is following