Alex Temple
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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]
References
- ^ "Spektral Quartet, With Julia Holter and Alex Temple, Release a Masterpiece: Behind the Wallpaper - SPIN".
- ^ Kozinn, Allan. "Contemporary Classical Music for the Curious". WSJ.
- ^ a b c "Alex Temple Makes Music out of Dream Logic". Chicago Magazine.
- ^ "The Quietus | Reviews | Spektral Quartet, Julia Holter, Alex Temple". The Quietus.
- ^ Pareles, Jon (February 26, 2015). "Review: Julia Holter and the Spektral Quartet in the Ecstatic Music Festival" – via NYTimes.com.
- ^ "American Composers Orchestra Phenomenal Women". www.carnegiehall.org. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
- ^ "American Composers Orchestra 21st Firsts". The New Yorker.
- ^ Milligan, Kaitlin. "American Composers Orchestra Honors PHENOMENAL WOMEN at Carnegie Hall". BroadwayWorld.com.
- ^ Nast, Condé (November 21, 2011). "The Long Haul". The New Yorker.