‘Composer Alive’ Album Now Available on All Platforms

On September 13th Access Contemporary Music’s label Invisible City Records will release its latest album: Composer Alive, featuring music commissioned by ACM between 2007 and 2022.

The album features a wide range of new music from composers Gabriela Ortiz, Alexandre Lunsqui, Vid Smooke, Arshia Samsaminia, Agnieszka Stulginska and Will Rowe.

Composer Alive is a unique project in which a composer writes a new piece in short installments over several months in long distance collaboration with ACM’s resident ensemble Palomar. Each installment is rehearsed and recorded in front of a live audience and then posted to the ACM website.

This innovative way of working gives composers the opportunity to hear what they write performed in real time as they write it and it gives an audience a rare glimpse into a composer’s creative process.

“Composer Alive started back in 2006 when the internet was still shiny and new and we were all thinking of cool things we could use it for,” says ACM’s founder and Executive Director Seth Boustead. “We decided it would be fun to collaborate in real time with composers around the world.”

Since its inception, Composer Alive has featured commissions from composers in China, Mexico, Ireland, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Poland, Iran and the United States.

This is the first time that ACM, or anyone else, has released any of this music commercially. Seven of the pieces were chosen to represent the project.

The inspirations for each piece include an Irish weather phenomenon, an 11th century Persian musical treatise, ancient cultures of Mexico, advertising jingles from the ‘50’s, mechanical representations of the natural world and nostalgia for one’s homeland.