photo credit: Dominica Eriksen
Ryan Carter (b. 1980) composes for instruments, voices, and computers. Ryan's work often explores new musical possibilities presented by emerging technologies, while remaining critical of the assumptions and unintended side effects embedded in them. Alternately playful, quirky, visceral, and intense, his music has been described by the New York Times as "imaginative ... like, say, a Martian dance party." Ryan has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the National Flute Association, the MATA Festival, Present Music, and many ensembles and soloists, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, and Meet the Composer. Awards include the Lee Ettelson Award, the Aaron Copland Award, the Left Coast Composition Contest, the National Association of Composers/USA Composer's Competition, the Publikumspreis at the Heidelberg Spring Festival, and the LA Phil Prize at Hack Music LA. Two portrait albums of his work can be heard on KAIROS Records.
An early innovator of interactive music for mobile devices, Ryan released iMonkeypants (an iOS album of motion-controlled interactive music) on the App Store in 2012. Beginning in 2017, Ryan developed a web-based system for allowing audiences to interact with performers by playing motion-controlled sound on their phones, leading to collaborations with the Boise Philharmonic, Hub New Music, the JACK Quartet, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Seattle Symphony artist-in-residence Seth Parker Woods, the Society for New Music, and musicians of the San Diego Symphony.
Raised in Wisconsin, Ryan holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BMus), Stony Brook University (MA), and New York University (PhD), where his teachers included Richard Hoffmann, Pauline Oliveros, Daniel Weymouth, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Matthias Pintscher. Ryan has pursued additional studies with Louis Andriessen and Gilius van Bergeijk at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague (the Netherlands) and with Brad Garton at the Computer Music Center at Columbia University. Ryan is Associate Professor of Music at Hamilton College.
Ryan Carter composes for instruments, voices, and computers, often exploring new musical possibilities presented by emerging technologies while remaining critical of the unintended side effects embedded in them. Alternately playful, quirky, visceral, and intense, his music has been described by the New York Times as "imaginative ... like, say, a Martian dance party." Ryan has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the National Flute Association, the MATA Festival, Present Music, and many ensembles and soloists, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, and Meet the Composer. An early innovator of interactive music for mobile devices, Ryan released iMonkeypants (an iOS album of motion-controlled interactive music) on the App Store in 2012. Beginning in 2017, Ryan developed a web-based system for allowing audiences to interact with performers by playing motion-controlled sound on their phones, leading to collaborations with the Boise Philharmonic, Hub New Music, the JACK Quartet, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Seattle Symphony artist-in-residence Seth Parker Woods, the Society for New Music, and musicians of the San Diego Symphony. Ryan holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BMus), Stony Brook University (MA), and New York University (PhD). Ryan is Associate Professor of Music at Hamilton College.
Ryan Carter composes music that explores and critically examines new possibilities presented by emerging technologies. Described by the New York Times as "imaginative ... like, say, a Martian dance party," Ryan's music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the MATA Festival, the National Flute Association, and many individuals and ensembles.
© Ryan Carter 2024