Alex
Temple

A sound can evoke a time, a place, or a way of looking at the world. Alex Temple (b. 1983) writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic or fantastical narratives. In addition to performing her own works for voice and electronics, she has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, wild Up, Spektral Quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In 2017 she completed a DMA at Northwestern University, and she is now an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University.

A sound can evoke a time, a place, a cultural moment, or a worldview.  Alex Temple (b. 1983) writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic, or fantastical narratives.  She’s particularly interested in reclaiming socially disapproved-of (“cheesy”) sounds, playing with the boundary between funny and frightening, investigating lost memories and secret histories, and telling queer and trans stories.

In addition to performing her own works for voice and electronics, she has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, Isabel Leonard, wild Up, Spektral Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.  She has also played keyboards with the chamber-rock group The Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles, and made sounds using her voice, synthesizers and household objects with a·pe·ri·od·ic.

Alex got her BA from Yale in 2005, and her MA from the University of Michigan in 2007.  After leaving Ann Arbor, she spent two years working for the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program for young composers.  In 2017 she completed a DMA at Northwestern, and she is now an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University.

A sound can evoke a time, a place, a cultural moment, or a worldview.  As someone who loves both the Western classical tradition and the world of pop culture, Alex Temple (b. 1983) has always felt uncomfortable with stylistic hierarchies and the idea of a pure musical language.  She prefers to look for points of connection between things that aren’t supposed to belong together, distorting and combining iconic sounds to create new meanings — often in service of surreal, cryptic, or fantastical narratives.  She’s particularly interested in reclaiming socially disapproved-of (“cheesy”) sounds, playing with the boundary between funny and frightening, investigating lost memories and secret histories, and telling queer and trans stories.

Alex’s work has been performed by a variety of soloists and ensembles, including Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, Isabel Leonard, Mabel Kwan, Amanda Gookin, wild Up, Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.  She has also performed her own works for voice and electronics in venues such as Roulette, Exapno, Galapagos Art Space, Gallery Cabaret, Constellation, and Experimental Sound Studio.  As the keyboardist for the chamber-rock group The Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles, she performed at the South by Southwest Festival and Chicago’s Green Mill Cocktail Lounge;  with a·pe·ri·od·ic, an ensemble dedicated to the performance of indeterminate music in the tradition of John Cage, she made sounds using her voice, synthesizers and household objects.

Alex got her BA from Yale University in 2005, where she studied with Kathryn Alexander and Matthew Suttor, and released two albums of electronic music on a microlabel that she ran out of her dorm room.  In 2007 she completed her MA at University of Michigan, where she studied with Erik Santos and visiting professors Michael Colgrass, Tania León and Betsy Jolas, as well as collaborating with a troupe of dancers and playing in an indie bossa-nova band.  After she left Ann Arbor, she spent two years working as the program manager for the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program for young composers.  In 2017, she completed a DMA at Northwestern University, where she studied with Hans Thomalla and Jay Alan Yim, and taught aural skills, theory, composition for non-majors, and private composition lessons. In recently years she has taught at Luna Lab and National Sawdust’s BluePrint Fellowship, and she is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at Arizona State University.