Composer Chats

JaRod Hall (b. 1991) is a Texas-native composer, educator, and performer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of North Texas where he studied conducting with Nicholas Williams and Dennis Fisher. JaRod's bands have received consistent sweepstakes awards at the Texas University Interscholastic League Concert and Sightreading Evaluations, as well as being recognized at...

Harrison J. Collins (b. 1999) began composing at the young age of thirteen. Since then, he has made a name for himself across the United States as a skilled composer. He combines his musical studies in academic settings with years of self-teaching and a strong intuition to write music that challenges and connects to performers and listeners alike. Their works for wind ensemble, orchestra, and cham...

Mark Adler brings to his work as a composer a broad background in both film and music. At age 16 he created an award-winning animated short which the New York Museum of Modern Art acquired for its permanent archive collection. A year later, he was the recipient of an American Film Institute grant for his original screenplay. He studied piano privately for fifteen years, and was initially a music m...

The Octopus Project has been releasing joyous party music since 2002, following a musical path that veers through blown-out rock’n’roll, vibrant electronics, surreal pop and expansive psych landscapes. Based in Austin, TX, the group of multi-instrumentalists has released six studio albums, starting with 2002’s Identification Parade. Touring venues and festivals worldwide (Lollapalooza, Coachella,...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Dominik Scherrer to the Podcast! Dominik first won the prestigious British Ivor Novello Award and received a Royal Television Society (RTS) nomination for his riveting score on Ripper Street. He earned two additional Ivor Novello nominations for Amazon’s The Collection and the British crime series Agatha Christie’s Marple. Dominik recently reunited with the Willi...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Jeff Toyne to the podcast! https://jefftoyne.com

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Steve Danyew to the podcast! www.stevedanyew.com teve Danyew’s music has been hailed as “startlingly beautiful” and “undeniably well crafted and communicative” by the Miami Herald , and has been praised as possessing “sensitivity, skill and tremendous sophistication” by the Kansas City Independent . Danyew (b. 1983) is the recipient of numerous national and inter...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Marie Antoinette Douglas to the show! Atlanta bred composer Marie A. Douglas mixes and layers genres and textures as a means to inject unprecedented relate-ability and excitement into pieces intended for concert stages. Her compositional choices portray her varied experiences creating a product that is highly artistic, gorgeous yet gritty, robust with innovation...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Ryan George to the podcast! RYAN GEORGE currently resides in Austin, Texas where he is active as an arranger and composer. His work, ranging from music for the concert stage to music for marching ensembles is performed regularly throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Ryan completed his first work for concert band in 2007 and since then his works h...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Quincy Hilliard to the podcast! Quincy C. Hilliard’s compositions for wind band are published by several major music publishers, and are performed throughout the world where there are wind bands of British-American instrumentation. His stature as an outstanding composer is apparent as conductors frequently commission him for new compositions. Dr. Hilliard has bee...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Nicole Piano to the podcast this week! Nicole Piunno (b. 1985) is a composer who views music as a vehicle for seeing and experiencing the realities of life. Her music often reflects the paradoxes in life and how these seeming opposites are connected as they often weave together. Her harmonic language and use of counterpoint mirrors the complexity of our world by...

Join Jason this week as he welcomes composer Dara Taylor to the show! Dara Taylor is an American composer for film and television scores. An HMMA-nominated composer, she has composed music for a number of Independent films including thrillers, dramas, and comedies. She has contributed additional music to ABC's Agent Carter , Galavant and Lifetime’s Child Genius as well as arrangements and score pr...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer David Biedenbender to the podcast! David Biedenbender (b. 1984, Waukesha, Wisconsin) is a composer, conductor, performer, educator, and interdisciplinary collaborator. David’s music has been described as “simply beautiful” (twincities.com), “striking” and “brilliantly crafted” ( Times Argus ) and is noted for its “rhythmic intensity” ( NewMusicBox ) and “stirring...

Join Jason as he welcomes THE Gordon Goodwin to the podcast! Even for a successful composer and arranger in Hollywood, Gordon Goodwin’s numbers are impressive: A 2006 GRAMMY Award for his Instrumental Arrangement of “Incredits” from the Pixar film The Incredibles, three Emmy Awards, and thirteen GRAMMY nominations. Here’s another impressive number to add to the list: eighteen. As in the number of...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Daniel Montoya Jr. to the podcast! Daniel Montoya Jr. is a proud and rare native of Austin, an ’80s, ’90s, & ’00s music aficionado, and fully embraces his unstoppable rise to “zaddy” status. He also, occasionally, writes music (since being musically moved by his first viewing of the James Cameron film Titanic and wanting to write the music to the sequel, Tita...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Alexandra Gardner to the podcast! Praised as “highly lyrical and provocative of thought” ( San Francisco Classical Voice ) and “mesmerizing” ( The New York Times ), the music of composer Alexandra Gardner is thrilling audiences and performers alike with a “particular alchemy of craft, whimsy, and sensual appeal” ( The New Yorker ). She composes for varied instrum...

Join Jason this week as he welcomes composer Rossano Galante! Born in Buffalo, New York, Rossano Galante received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Trumpet Performance from SUNY Buffalo in 1992. That same year he was one of nineteen people from around the world to be accepted to the University of Southern California’s Film Scoring Program. He studied with the late Jerry Goldsmith, who won an Academy...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Robbie Teehan to the podcast! www.robbieteehan.com Robbie (Rob) Teehan is a JUNO-award nominated Canadian composer, known for his nuanced and melodic scores to film, TV, and video games, and broad musical experience. He scored the critically-acclaimed Canadian film SCARBOROUGH , hailed by NOW Magazine as “A New Canadian Cinema”, and winner of 8 Canadian Screen Aw...

Join Jason this week as he welcomes composer Erika Svanoe to the podcast! Dr. Erika Svanoe (b. 1976) is a conductor and composer for wind band, known for her lyrical melodies, nods to classic literature, musical deconstruction, humor, and pastiche. Her works have been performed by "The President's Own" United States Marine Band, the United States Navy Band, the National Concert Band of America, fe...

Join Jason as he welcomes composer Adam Gorb to the show! Adam Gorb was born in 1958 and started composing at the age of ten. At fifteen he wrote a set of piano pieces – A Pianist’s Alphabet – of which a selection was performed by Susan Bradshaw on BBC Radio 3. In 1977 he went to Cambridge University to study music, where his teachers included Hugh Wood and Robin Holloway. After graduating in 1980...

Join Jason as he welcomes Dutch composer and conductor Johan de Meij to the podcast! Dutch composer and conductor Johan de Meij (Voorburg, 1953) received his musical training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, where he studied trombone and conducting. His award-winning oeuvre of original compositions, symphonic transcriptions and film score arrangements has garnered him international...

Join Jason as he welcomes world renown, Grammy nominated soprano, Laura Strickling! Two-time GRAMMY® award nominee for Best Classical Vocal Solo Album for Confessions (2022) and 40@40 (2024) – Laura Strickling’s recordings make, “a strong statement about the status of contemporary art songs and her commitment to them,” (Schmopera). Recognized by The New York Times for her “flexible voice, crystall...

Join Jason this week as he welcomes composer Catherine Joy to the podcast! With a passion for music and collaboration, Catherine Joy is a composer for film, media and live performance. She recently won Best Documentary Score for the uplifting feature documentary Gold Balls, and in 2014 won the Independent Music Vox Pop Award for her soundtrack for the film All Things Hidden. Catherine is the Execu...

Listen in as Jason welcomes composer Anne McGinty to the podcast! Anne McGinty is known throughout the world as the most prolific woman composer in the field of concert band literature, having written more than 225 pieces, with more than 50 of those commissioned by bands across the United States. Thousands of people have played her music and discovered the joy and beauty of playing music that is b...

Listen in as Jason welcomes composer Jennifer Jolley to the podcast! Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981) is a composer, conductor, and professor person. Her work is founded on the belief that the pleasures and excesses of music have the unique potential to engage political and provocative subjects. Addressing a range of topics such as climate change, #MeToo, feminist history, and the abuses of the Putin reg...