biography
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Rejecting grandiose narratives, the music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak is driven by a love of small things: miniature forms, delicate soundscapes, and condensed ideas. His compositions, which draw influence from literature, art, and poetry, have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. Novak was selected for a 2022 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received recent honors from the ASCAP Foundation, Red Note Competition, League of Composers/ISCM, Lake George Music Festival, and National Association of Composers of the USA. In 2020, he was the recipient of the American Composers Orchestra’s Underwood Commission for a new orchestral work that the ACO will premiere in Carnegie Hall; he has also received commissions from ASCAP and Society of Composers, Inc., Music from Copland House, the Boston New Music Initiative, Blackbox Ensemble, and Kinetic Ensemble. Other recent collaborators include the Austin Symphony, Orlando Philharmonic, Sandbox Percussion, Ekmeles, Quince Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Quatuor Diotima, LIGAMENT Duo, and Tribeca New Music.
Each of Novak’s pieces immerses listeners in a shimmering and subtly crafted musical world, guided by a sense of empathy for the performers playing his music. Originally from Reno, NV, he completed his undergraduate studies at Rice University, and is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago, where he studies with Augusta Read Thomas. |
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artist statement
My creative practice is driven by a love of small things. Rejecting grandiose musical statements, I’m drawn to delicate sounds and miniature forms: to short, unassuming pieces which contain entire worlds, and to tiny structures which are nevertheless intricately detailed and captivating. In each of my pieces, I seek to immerse listeners in a shimmering and subtly crafted musical landscape, guided by a sensitive ear for harmony and texture and a deep sense of empathy for the performers playing my music. I see each of my pieces as a brief glimpse through a portal into a dream-like other world, one which is filled with color, motion, light, and magic.
Collaboration is at the center of my art-making, whether I am creating pieces in cooperation with individual performers and ensembles or working on interdisciplinary projects with poets, visual artists, and dancers. While composition might seem like a solitary art form, for me its most powerful moments are fundamentally social: for all the time I spend alone writing music, I ultimately rely on others to perform my work. My pieces are frequently created through conversations with other artists and designed with the playing and personalities of these artists in mind. I see my creative practice as situated within a network of collaborators, an interdependent web of artists who inspire and learn from one another.
For me, the craft of composition is synonymous with the cultivation of empathy. The creation of a piece of music involves a long and complex chain of communication— from the composer’s inception and notation to the musician’s interpretation and performance to the audience’s hearing — and I’ve found this process is at its most meaningful when there is compassion and listening between everyone involved. My best pieces are the ones that attune themselves to the embodied experiences and individual playing of performers; I prefer to write for specific musicians rather just “for clarinet” or “for string quartet.” When I’m beginning a piece, I often ask players to create some of their favorite sounds on the instruments, and then seek to connect and weave these sounds together. My music is deeply concerned with the collaborative, social aspects of performance, and often features performers entangling and interlocking in complex orchestrational configurations.
My art-making draws inspiration from literature, visual art, dance, and poetry, from biological and astronomical phenomena, and from history and myth. In particular, I’m deeply committed to working with text, and many of my pieces entwine music and words in different ways. Some of my pieces use text and music together as a narrative device; others intentionally obscure a text, deconstructing it into its individual phonemes. Some pieces feature long texts in their entirety; some set incredibly short ones in a fragmented way; some pieces feature sung texts; some feature spoken texts; and for some, a text is the creative impetus for a purely instrumental composition. For me, this fascination with text goes hand in hand with a love of interdisciplinary collaborations with writers and poets: working in a tradition that’s often very backward-looking and rooted in the past, there’s something incredibly refreshing about setting a text when the person who wrote it is sitting next to you. And as someone who’s fascinated by art from a lot of different sources, I’ve found that interdisciplinary projects are an incredible way to use my music to amplify the voices of artists I respect, and advocate for art that I love.
Collaboration is at the center of my art-making, whether I am creating pieces in cooperation with individual performers and ensembles or working on interdisciplinary projects with poets, visual artists, and dancers. While composition might seem like a solitary art form, for me its most powerful moments are fundamentally social: for all the time I spend alone writing music, I ultimately rely on others to perform my work. My pieces are frequently created through conversations with other artists and designed with the playing and personalities of these artists in mind. I see my creative practice as situated within a network of collaborators, an interdependent web of artists who inspire and learn from one another.
For me, the craft of composition is synonymous with the cultivation of empathy. The creation of a piece of music involves a long and complex chain of communication— from the composer’s inception and notation to the musician’s interpretation and performance to the audience’s hearing — and I’ve found this process is at its most meaningful when there is compassion and listening between everyone involved. My best pieces are the ones that attune themselves to the embodied experiences and individual playing of performers; I prefer to write for specific musicians rather just “for clarinet” or “for string quartet.” When I’m beginning a piece, I often ask players to create some of their favorite sounds on the instruments, and then seek to connect and weave these sounds together. My music is deeply concerned with the collaborative, social aspects of performance, and often features performers entangling and interlocking in complex orchestrational configurations.
My art-making draws inspiration from literature, visual art, dance, and poetry, from biological and astronomical phenomena, and from history and myth. In particular, I’m deeply committed to working with text, and many of my pieces entwine music and words in different ways. Some of my pieces use text and music together as a narrative device; others intentionally obscure a text, deconstructing it into its individual phonemes. Some pieces feature long texts in their entirety; some set incredibly short ones in a fragmented way; some pieces feature sung texts; some feature spoken texts; and for some, a text is the creative impetus for a purely instrumental composition. For me, this fascination with text goes hand in hand with a love of interdisciplinary collaborations with writers and poets: working in a tradition that’s often very backward-looking and rooted in the past, there’s something incredibly refreshing about setting a text when the person who wrote it is sitting next to you. And as someone who’s fascinated by art from a lot of different sources, I’ve found that interdisciplinary projects are an incredible way to use my music to amplify the voices of artists I respect, and advocate for art that I love.