Live recording during Minneapolis songSLAM, January 2025 — Icehouse Minneapolis

Words by Phil Takemura Sears
Laura LeVoir, soprano
Timothy Roy, piano

Strange Night (2025)

TIMOTHY ROY (b. 1987, Nederland, Texas) composes music steeped in imagery and allusion, which seeks to elicit a sense of time, place, and feeling. With an output that encompasses works for acoustic instruments, electronic sound, and the intersection of these two realms, Roy endeavors to explore a broad range of mediums and contexts in which his work might be experienced.
 
Engagement with other disciplines of study is the lifeblood of Roy's creative practice. Recent projects have involved cooperation with practitioners in fields as varied as medieval and religious studies, ecology, dance, and film. His current slate of projects includes an ambisonic fixed media work, commissioned by ASCAP/SEAMUS and an orchestral work for the Shepherd Symphony Orchestra at Rice University.  
 
Roy’s music has been heard in concerts across the United States and twenty countries abroad, with performances by Ensemble Signal, Illinois Modern Ensemble, the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra, the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus, Loop38, violinist Sayako Kusaka, and pianists Keith Kirchoff, Adam Marks, Stacey Barelos, and Xenia Pestova. His music has been presented at such venues and events as the National Theater of Taipei, Music Biennale Zagreb, ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST), Sonosfera Theatre (Pesaro, Italy), the DiMenna Center (NYC), San Francisco Tape Music Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Florida State University Festival of New Music, Bowling Green New Music Festival, June in Buffalo, Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium, Sonorities Festival Belfast, International Computer Music Festival (ICMC), Center of Cypriot Composers, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, and the International Electroacoustic Music Festival of Chile, “Ai-maako.”
 
In 2024, Roy received an Honorable Mention in the McKnight Composer Fellowship awards from American Composers Forum. He has also received awards and recognition from the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award (First Prize, 2022), ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Award (First Prize, 2023; Finalist, 2018), Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers (First Prize in Professional Division, 2023), Giga-Hertz Production Prize (Honorable Mention, 2022), Prix CIME from the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music (Distinction, 2023), Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest (Second Prize, 2023), New Music on the Bayou (2021 Black Bayou Composition Award), Sigma Alpha Iota Inter-American Music Awards (Winner, 2015), the International Competition of Electroacoustic Composition “Prix Destellos” (First Prize, 2013; Honorary Mention, 2019), Musicacoustica-Beijing Composition Competition (First Prize, student mixed media category, 2012), the First International Jean Sibelius Composition Competition (Finalist, 2015), the International Composition Competition “Città di Udine” (Finalist, 2012), and the I-Park Foundation (Resident Artist, 2018).
 
His work "Behind the Back" for pipa and electronics appears on Crossings: Contemporary Music for Chinese Instruments, The Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra’s debut album with Albany Records. His "Salve Regina" for chorus is published by Edition Peters.

He frequently collaborates with musicians to present works for instruments and electronics. In July 2021, he worked closely with Steven Takasugi to produce two portrait concerts of his works for amplified instruments and electronics during the Twin Cities New Music Festival. Other notable collaborations include performance of electronics for Kate Soper's Voices from the Killing Jar and for the North American premiere of Unsuk Chin's "Double Bind?" for violin and 8-channel audio, using proprietary motion-tracking sensors and software from Ircam.

He was a visiting faculty member at Western Michigan University during the 2018–2019 academic year, where he taught private composition lessons, undergraduate theory, and graduate seminars in musical form and the aesthetics of electroacoustic music. He previously taught at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas.
 
Roy and his wife currently reside in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he is choirmaster and organist at the Church of Saint Peter Roman Catholic Community. He is completing a doctorate at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music; there, he taught electronic music, theory, and composition, and served for three years as the Teaching Fellow for the Rice Electroacoustic Music Labs (REMLABS). His teachers have been Kurt Stallmann, Pierre Jalbert, Karim Al-Zand, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Paul Rudy, Kevin Hanlon, Simon Sargon, and Martin Sweidel.