Congratulations, Patrick!! 2022 ASCAP NISSIM PRIZE is yours!! 

This recording was created as part of the 2021 June in Buffalo Festival, with each performer recording individually and remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman, conductor; Kelli Kathman, flute; Adrián Sandí, clarinet; Lisa Moore, Piano; Courtney Orlando, Violin; Lauren Radnofsky, Cello. Sound Engineering, editing, mixing and mastering by Paul Coleman.

Read the preliminary essay here:
https://bit.ly/3gFOwAo

Currents | Ensemble Signal

Public reading of Patrick Holcomb's "This City was Once an Ocean" by San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, conducted by Eric Dudley. at Herbst Theatre, June 23, 2023.

Patrick Holcomb - "This City was Once an Ocean"

Recorded at the Hartt School, June 19, 2017, by engineer Will Jones.

Patrick Holcomb - FINDING MUSE (2017)

Jonathan Newmark - Awakening (2017)

Josh Sparkman - 4.4.17 II. "Were they dead at all?"

Josh Sparkman - 4.4.17 I. sa-rin: an extremely toxic chemical weapon (2017)

"Persephone" (2019) for orchestra
by Patrick Holcomb

Indiana University Concert Orchestra
David Dzubay, conductor

Recorded November 19-20, 2019
Musical Arts Center, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

"Persephone" © 2019 by N. Patrick Holcomb. All rights reserved.

Program Note:

Persephone (2019) is a reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Persephone, the goddess who was abducted by Hades and subsequently forced to spend a portion of each year with him in the underworld. The work was born out of my attempt to imagine Persephone seeing her reflection in each of the six rivers visible from the underworld on her annual journey into Hades.

The piece begins on the shore of the Oceanus, the river-sea that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. Persephone (represented here by the alto flute and the bassoon) cries out in anguish as she awaits her return to the underworld for the coming months. The towering but distant voice of her mother, the powerful goddess Demeter (represented here by the oboe and the bass clarinet), echoes Persephone’s distress back to her. As the goddesses’ voices become increasingly hysterical, Hades (represented here by the horn and the trombone) emerges from the earth, seizing Persephone and taking her in his chariot over the Oceanus and into the underworld. As they fly over the Acheron, the river of pain that marks the entrance of the underworld, Persephone sees the reflections of her and her captor distorted by the ripples caused by the oars of the ferryman Charon. The Phlegethon, the river of fire, is patrolled on both sides by centaurs who prevent the shades of the wicked from escaping the water; Persephone’s reflection stands alongside the ghosts imprisoned in the river. She sees her face contorted by rage in the turbulent waters of the Styx, the river of hatred that wraps around the underworld seven times. The dead who do not receive a proper burial spend eternity on the banks of the Cocytus, the river of wailing; similarly trapped, Persephone sees her reflection mingled with these ghosts and hears her voice echoed in their cries. The Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, passes by the cave of the sleep god Hypnos; in this river, Persephone watches herself surrender to sleep, accepting that she can do nothing to change her fate.

Persephone (2019) for orchestra

Patrick Holcomb (b. 1996) is a composer based on Long Island. A member of Mensa since age nineteen, Holcomb seeks to write music that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging.  In his compositions, he makes frequent use of mensuration canons and ratios that govern recursive rhythmic and pitch relationships. He cites the time he spent studying Hindustani (North Indian) music and performing tabla and Indian harmonium under the guidance of Denise Nuttall (a student of Zakir Hussain) as one of his largest compositional influences.

Holcomb’s recent compositional honors include the 2022 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize, a 2021 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, a 2021 American Prize in Composition, and a 2020 BMI Student Composer Award. His solo piano pieces Rapture After Schoenberg and Kandinsky and Carousel After Milhaud and Archipenko were composed on the occasion of Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, which showed from November 8, 2024 through March 9, 2025 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In addition to concert music, Holcomb also composes for visual media. His score for the 1925 silent documentary Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life accompanied the film during its showings at the Museum of Modern Art in October and November 2023 as a part of the series Iranian Cinema Before the Revolution, 1925–1979. His music has also been featured at the Aspen Music Festival And School (in 2025), the ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer Grant Project (in 2023), the American Composers Orchestra EarShot New Music Readings (in 2022), June in Buffalo (in 2022), the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Workshop (in 2022), the Bowdoin International Music Festival (in 2021), the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and Festival (in 2019), and Connecticut Summerfest (in 2017 and 2018).

Holcomb earned his PhD in Composition from the University of Rochester Eastman School of Music, which he attended as a Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull University Fellow, in 2025. He also received an MM in Music Composition and an MM in Music Scoring for Visual Media from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2021. Holcomb completed his undergraduate studies at Ithaca College, from which he graduated top of his class in the School of Music (now a part of the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance) with a BM in Music Composition in 2018. His primary teachers included Claude Baker, Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, Larry Groupé, Robert Morris, Eugene O’Brien, Evis Sammoutis, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Tom Schneller, Aaron Travers, Dana Wilson, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.

In addition to composing, Holcomb is also a passionate educator. He is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Hofstra University.

Profile photo by Meredith Hart.

Persephone (2019) for orchestra

Patrick Holcomb, composer

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Patrick Holcomb, composer

Patrick Holcomb, composer

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