Composer | Writer | Educator
Max Gibson is a British-Irish composer, writer, and educator based in Northern California, whose work spans concert music, multimedia, electronic music, and theatre.
His projects have been performed and presented internationally in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, the USA, and across the UK.
Drawing on medievalism, architecture, globalism, industrialism, astronomy and astrology, as well as the natural world, he is musically interested in expanded time, line and counterpoint, sound massing, the act of listening, and with configuring the space of performance and spectatorship through interdisciplinary approaches to composition.
Concerns surrounding sustainable creative practices, the politics of participation, and demands of labour within various musicking models have also started to inform and influence his philosophy of practice.
He has had the pleasure of working with a number of musicians and groups including The Carice Singers, Mojave Trio, Birmingham Opera Company, Nick Tolle, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Sarah Nicolls and Carl Raven, Wendy Richman, Ensemble PinkNoise, The Waveform Collective, Elliott Sharp, Splinter Reeds, Mivos Quartet, Késia Decoté, Verena Barie, deCompagnie, Cameron Woodhead, Christine Cornwell & klank.ist, Peter Merckx & Marc Tooten (HERMESensemble), The Assembly Project, Hear My Music, Laura Moody, Mary Wiegold, Alessandro Ruisi & Dina Duisen, Notes Inégeles & Peter Wiegold, CoMA, Decibel, Coull Quartet, Ensemble Paramirabo, Wayward Brass, and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. His work has been featured in a number of festivals, including Three Choirs Festival, Dartington International Festival, Jewellery Quarter Festival, Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, impuls, SPLICE Institute, Savassi Festival (Brazil), CrossCurrents, Flatpack Film Festival, Frontiers Festival, Stratford Music Festival, Oxford Festival of the Arts, St Magnus International Festival, and the AlbaNova Festival (Belgium).
He is pursuing a PhD in Composition and Theory, with emphases in Environmental Humanities and Science and Technology Studies, at the University of California, Davis on a Provost Fellowship. At UC Davis his composition teachers include Pablo Ortiz, Mika Pelo, and Kurt Rohde, and he also studies harpsichord with Faythe Vollrath.
Max’s musical journey has been guided by teachers and mentors including Rolf Hind, Antoine Beuger, Ron Kuivila, Paula Matthusen, Howard Skempton, Michael Zev Gordon, Scott Wilson, and Michael Finnissy, amongst others.
He is an avid cook and baker, and enjoys experimenting with food as much as he does sound. At some point he wants to explore works that incorporate food into the musical experience. He loves marmite and kombucha, although not together. He also has an unhealthy obsession with Stroopwafels.
Photo credits to Mingrui Wen, Avi Friederich and Anya Shatilova.
Max Gibson 