Alex Temple is a contemporary classical music composer and professor of music composition. Her pieces draw from multiple styles of both classical and popular music.

Compositions

Behind the Wallpaper is a narrative song cycle, with music and lyrics by Temple. In 2023, the Spektral Quartet released a recording featuring singer Julia Holter. According to Spin Magazine, the narrative was inspired by Temple's gender transition as a trans woman, using surreal, dreamlike imagery to explore feelings of otherness.[1] The Wall Street Journal compared elements of the piece to Beethoven's “Pastorale” Symphony and David Ackles's American Gothic, with chromatic melodies and various contemporary techniques.[2] The poems use a second-person ("you") perspective.[3] Behind the Wallpaper contains cinematic elements reminiscent of horror films.[4] The New York Times described the horror elements of a 2015 performance of the song cycle as "surreal transformations and spooky situations: a character who has been swallowing seawater and live fish, another wandering a house where the walls keep shifting."[5]

In 2018, Temple's piece Three Principles of Noir premiered at Carnegie Hall alongside composer Valerie Coleman's Phenomenal Women[6] as part of a showcase of composers under the age of forty.[7] Three Principles of Noir features a time-travel narrative.[8]

Temple's piece Liebeslied was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.[3] It includes surreal variations of 1940s–1950s love songs.[9]

Academia

Temple is a professor of music composition at Arizona State University.[3] She has a Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) from Northwestern University.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Steve Hochman (March 9, 2023). "Spektral Quartet, with Julia Holter and Alex Temple, Release a Masterpiece: Behind the Wallpaper". Spin.
  2. ↑ Kozinn, Allan (13 March 2023). "Contemporary Classical Music for the Curious". The Wall Street Journal.
  3. 1 2 3 "Alex Temple Makes Music out of Dream Logic". Chicago.
  4. ↑ "Reviews: Spektral Quartet, Julia Holter, Alex Temple". The Quietus.
  5. ↑ Pareles, Jon (February 26, 2015). "Review: Julia Holter and the Spektral Quartet in the Ecstatic Music Festival". The New York Times.
  6. ↑ "American Composers Orchestra Phenomenal Women". www.carnegiehall.org. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
  7. ↑ "American Composers Orchestra: '21st Firsts". The New Yorker. October 2018.
  8. ↑ Milligan, Kaitlin. "American Composers Orchestra Honors Phenomenal Women at Carnegie Hall". BroadwayWorld.
  9. ↑ Alex Ross (November 21, 2011). "The Long Haul". The New Yorker.
  10. ↑ "New music concerts for winter and spring at the Bienen School of Music". news.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2023-09-24.
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