Philip Schuessler
Composer, Songwriter, Arranger
“His ideas are not at all ordinary, and he is able to follow an idea with determination. At the same time, I find his music quite subtle and full of nuance. His music is unusual – for this era, at least – in that he does not go for the ‘big effect,’ but relies on an accumulation of subtle surprises. The result is music that is witty, intellectually and esthetically satisfying.”
Dan Weymouth – Professor of Composition and Theory, Stony Brook University
Recent & Upcoming Performances 2023
Fast Flies Meanwhile the Irreparable Hour… for piano, August 18th 2023, Open Space Piano Satellite 1, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Akademie für Tonkunst (Kleiner Saal), Darmstadt, GERMANY – Yumi Suehiro, piano
Indifference Engines II for four metronomes, April 20th 2023, Southeastern Contemporary Music Ensemble Spring Concert, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA World Premiere
Duet for Quartet for percussion quartet, June 2nd 2023, New Music on the Bayou Festival, Ruston, LA
Rube Goldberg Variations for tuba-euphonium quartet, November 3rd 2023, SCI Region V Conference, Ohio University, Athens, OH
Featured Recording for October 2023
This month’s featured recording is Precision Music for Shitty Instruments, an open-instrumentation work composed for the Southeastern Contemporary Ensemble in 2020.
This work is written for four players performing unspecified instruments. Each player has a primary instrument and a set of auxiliary instruments. Primary instruments are intended to be instruments that meet any one (or more) of the following criteria:
What is a shitty instrument?
1) An instrument that is broken in some capacity that inhibits it from being ideally suited for performance in a conventional chamber music setting in front of an audience; the instrument should still be able to produce sound, though sound production should be hindered in a subtle or severe way (i.e. some or all pitches do not sound without creating noise, or some or all pitches are out of tune, etc.)
