After hearing Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4 being performed in his high school’s library, Taylor Brook knew that he wanted to become a composer. Not only did the musical experience prove to be exhilarating, hearing the piece also broadened his idea of what music could be – which shows in the music that he writes today.
Although Taylor started out by playing several different genres of music on a variety of instruments when he was younger, it wasn’t until this same time in high school that he began to take music seriously. Ultimately, he pursued his passion for music by attending the Schulich School of Music of McGill University for a Bachelor and Master degree in composition, and later completed a Doctorate in composition at Columbia University.
His desire to broaden his musical horizons also took him to study in other places than in formal institutions, including a two-month visit to Kolkata, India in 2008. After taking part in the McGill Tabla Ensemble during his time as an undergraduate student at McGill, Taylor had a strong desire to continue exploring Hindustani music, and after graduating, he yearned to continue his studies while travelling in another part of the world. “This experience [of traveling to Kolkata] continues to have a great impact on my music, though often in subtle ways,” Taylor describes. “Even at the time I knew I didn't want to write Hindustani music or something overtly influenced by it, instead there is hopefully something deeper in terms of musical gesture and subtlety of timbre and perhaps certain ways of thinking about rhythm that have made their way into my work.”
Taylor also began exploring the use of microtones in his compositions while in his undergrad degree, which is an element that can still be heard today in his writing. “I first came across the idea when I first heard some spectral compositions as well as the piece VoiReX by Philippe Leroux at the wonderful MusiMars festival that year,” he describes. “The use of microtones in spectralism and the approach to timbre in that music was very attractive to me. Probably even more importantly, Jacob Sudol, who was a graduate student at Schulich at that time, would share all sorts of interesting music with me,chiefly the music of La Monte Young and Georg Haas. La Monte Young's Well-tuned Piano was my favorite piece of music for many years and cemented my continued usage of just intonation as a basic starting point when considering pitch.”
Along these same lines, his DMA dissertation featured a newly composed piece that combined his development of microtonality with the production techniques of film music, as well as an essay that focused on the analysis of three microtonal compositions.
Following the Graham Sommer Competition, Taylor will be returning to Columbia University as a post-doctoral fellow. You can follow his other activities by visiting his website.
"Amalgam" by Taylor Brook, performed by TAK ensemble:
