Brian Simalchik (b. 1988, Danbury, CT) writes music that embraces emotional directness and nuance, evocative sounds and structures, and the expressive potential of silence and space.
He has had premieres by Roomful of Teeth, the Slee Sinfonietta, Wild Shore New Music, the Berkshire Symphony, UVA Percussion Ensemble, Williams Percussion Ensemble, I/O Ensemble, Opus Zero Band, Foot in the Door, Performance 20/20, Matthew Gold, Andrea Violet Lodge, I-Jen Fang and Casey McLellan. His music has been presented by organizations such as the Talea Ensemble (at The Stone in NYC), June in Buffalo, Yarn/Wire, nief-norf, Wild Shore New Music, Close Encounters with Music, the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, the I/O New Music Festival and Mass MoCA. His piece Seven Songs was a winner of the nief-norf Summer Festival 2016 International Call for Scores. His piece Overlooks was a winner of the Wild Shore New Music 2016 Call for Scores and was performed in Alaska, New York City and Washington, D.C. on a program celebrating the National Park Service's centennial. He has been in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (in 2013 and 2020) and at Mass MoCA, and has participated in June in Buffalo and the Yarn/Wire International Institute.
He has degrees from The Hartt School (M.M.), where he studied composition with Robert Carl, and from Williams College (B.A.), where he was the recipient of the Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Fellowship in Music and studied with David Kechley and Ileana Perez-Velazquez. He has also studied with Jennifer Higdon and Judith Shatin at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He currently lives in Charlottesville, VA, where he hosts A New Sound, a radio show on WTJU focusing on contemporary classical music.
Contact
My music is self-published under the name Topography (ASCAP). For scores and performance materials, as well all other inquiries, please email brian.simalchik@gmail.com.
Recent Activities
wrote a new piece (Finite Things) for flute and piano for the wonderful Yoshi Weinberg and Daniel Schreiner, whom I got to know when they performed on my work Seven Songs at the 2016 Nief-Norf Summer Festival. We’re looking at a premiere in fall 2021.
worked closely with percussionist I-Jen Fang to realize and record a performance of all three movements of Self-Portrait (You Are Not Your Thoughts) for the entirely digital 2020 Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival. Listen to some interviews I did about the piece and the festival for WTJU.
participated in the 2020 Yarn/Wire International Institute, a digital-only version of this yearly festival. I worked with composers Ann Cleare and Katherine Young as well as members of Yarn/Wire. As part of the festival, I composed a brand-new, three-movement work for solo marimba for percussionist Jessie Otaiza (entitled Self Portrait (You Are Not Your Thoughts)), who performed the first movement on a concluding digital concert.
participated in the digital version of June in Buffalo 2020, working with composers Roger Reynolds, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Hilda Paredes and Robert H.P. Platz. As part of the festival, the ensemble version of my ongoing work Overlooks was performed and recorded by wonderful musicians in the Slee Sinfonietta.
in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in February and March 2020, studying with composer Jennifer Higdon alongside 23 other fellows in music composition, painting and choreography
Current Projects
I am knee-deep in solo piano music! I am finishing up two suites - Ordinary Time, in seven movements (started during the strange pandemic summer of 2020), and The Land of Steady Habits, which is in five movements. I am also working on two additional suites - Storm King Miniatures, with movements inspired by my favorite sculptures at Storm King Art Center; and a set of five canons based on material from an project that never came to fruition.
a second volume of additional Overlooks (my ongoing, quasi-journal piece about memories of time spent in high places) for viola and piano