Stephen Gorbos | Composer

One of last year’s projects was a new wind ensemble piece for Stephen Story and the Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble: Bright Embrace saw the light of day on November 18th, 2023. I’m sorry it took so long to post the recording. It is always such a joy to go back to my alma mater and work with the students that are there now: in addition to the premiere with Stephen and the Wind Ensemble, I also gave a talk on my music to undergrads and masters students in the composition seminar, and got to spend some time with my very first composition teacher, the one and only Nancy Galbraith! Take a listen to the piece here.

Greetings, world! It has been some time since I posted an update on this site. There has been a lot going on recently, and I hope to no longer neglect this space and post some links to various projects in the coming days. For starters, last year I founded Little City Concerts, a new concert series in Falls Church City, VA that mixes music and social justice. How did I get there? Here’s the story:

Many of you know that we relocated to Falls Church City in 2022. We love this progressive community so much, and our family is positively thriving. Little City Concerts grew out of an idea of finding some way to build something here that contributes to this awesome community (for those of you that are not local, Falls Church City has the nickname The Little City as one of the smallest city designates in the state). Each of our concerts is themed around a particular issue. The artists we work with, who all have some connection to the larger area, develop a program that resonates with that theme, and then we partner with a nonprofit that works in that area. From our ticket sales, we donate 50% to that nonprofit. Partnerships last year were with EcoAction Arlington, SMYAL, and Doorways; for Season 2, we are slated to work with the News Literacy Project, Heard, OAR of Arlington, Alexandria, and Falls Church, and Teaching for Change. While I’ve been involved putting on concerts of one kind or another since high school, orienting a series this way is completely new to me, and it’s been profoundly gratifying to interact with these nonprofits and shine a light on their work. Our first season was firmly rooted in contemporary classical music, and fresh takes on historical traditions (and featured some of my music: a complete performance of Whitman Fragments!). In season 2, we are expanding to include our first opera production (Ashi Day’s Waking the Witch), and our first commission (from DC drummer and composer Keith Butler, Jr). We’ve had tremendous success gaining support from our city and county arts councils (shout out to ArtsFairfax and The Falls Church City Arts and Humanities Council!), as well as individuals and businesses in our community (our crowdfunding campaign last year funded the bulk of our season, and commissioning fee for our first commission). Also, another important partnership in making all of this work is our collaboration with The Falls Church Episcopal, the historic church that our city takes its name from (dating back to 1723): all of our shows take place in one of their spaces. I’m so grateful to have found a partner to host the series that shares my organizations ideals. We recently got a nice write-up in one of our local papers: click here to check out that piece in The Falls Church Independent.

If you are connected with me on social media, you probably noticed a shift in my posts starting last year. This series has been a large amount of work, and also a bit of an experiment in how it feels to steer some of my creative energy into a project like this. All of this being said, writing music is still something I’m deeply committed to, and haven’t stopped plugging away at. There have been some very interesting projects from this past year that I haven’t gotten a chance to share on this platform yet – stay tuned for recordings and news along those lines.

I’m so happy to share these two recordings from last spring. The amazing Celine Mogielnicki and I premiered Whitman Fragments, currently a set of two songs which is slowly growing into more, for voice and piano. The two we performed, As the water follows the moon and How Strong, are pandemic products, and though short, had a long gestation. I think they reflect both a stoicism in living through our present moment, and the awe at discovering and understanding a bit more about who these people really are that we spent so much time with over the past few pandemic years. You can read more about the piece and have a listen here

Greetings! It has been some time since I shared anything new on this site. Composing and getting my music out there has absolutely taken a back seat during the pandemic. So much so that at this point, I’ve got nothing lined up, and I’m just trying to make it through to the relative calmness of summer 2022 where I’ll hopefully have more space to think and work. While I’m hoping this slow down in public creative output is temporary, I really don’t know what the future holds (musically speaking), and I’m surprised at how long it took me to get to what follows. All of that said, I’m really excited to share two new-ish pieces with you all which I just posted: Mercurial Shadows (for Gideon), for oboe and electronics, and Vox Siderum, for violin, cello, and piano.

Mercurial Shadows was commissioned by the amazing Ben Buergel, and was the very last gig I had prior to the pandemic shutting everything down. Ben played it on Feb 27th, 2020, at the Atlas Theater in DC on the Intersections Festival. I wrote it as a response to my middle child’s period of hearing loss.

You can read more about Mercurial Shadows (for Gideon) and have a listen here.

Vox Siderum was commissioned by the Maryland State Music Teachers Association for a premiere initially scheduled in the fall of 2021, but this got pushed back until December 2022 due to Covid. I wrote the piece for my friends I’ve met through Balance Campaign, and the commission was intended to be played at the MSMTA’s annual young composer event. It was amazing to meet these 16 young composers, all students in elementary through high school, who are extremely excited about writing music. Sandy Choi, Erin Snedicor, and Liz Hill gave a lovely rendering of the piece – I’m really happy to share the live recording of it, and hope we can do it again some time soon.

You can read more about and listen to Vox Siderum here.

I’m writing in today with a bit of very exciting news: Blue, a short film by Ziad Foty that I scored over Summer 2020, just saw its premiere at the Beverly Hills Film Festival, and was selected for the Audience Choice Award of Best Short Film. You can view the trailer for the film here. A huge thank you is due to Ziad and the rest of the creative team for including me on this. I’m so proud of the way this project turned out, in that I got to draw on a lot of my diverse interests as a composer. In addition to the incidental music, I also got to write and record an original song for this one, called Breaking Away (sung by the incredibly talented Nadine El-Bayoumi Foty).

While I’ve been fortunate this past year compared to many in the arts, writing music was incredibly hard to make time for within all the pandemic-related craziness. I’m also kind of shocked that I’ve let updates on this site slide for as long as I have: I knew it had been awhile, but…Dec 2019? I’m sorry, dear reader. In summary: the pandemic has dried up many opportunities for performances this past year, and, much of my energy has been focused on my family since March 2020. My very last live performance was right before everything shut down in March (Mercurial Shadows, for Gideon, a solo oboe and electronics commission that was featured on the 2020 Atlas Intersections Festival), and while I’m a bit ashamed to have not edited the audio into a presentable recording 13 months later, I hope to get to it as soon as my semester closes out at Catholic University. In addition to composing the music for Blue this year, I also did the music to a filmed short play festival at CUA in the fall (and will hopefully be able to post some highlights shortly), and I’ve been working ever so slowly on a new commission for a piano trio that will hopefully see the light of day at the end of 2021. Posting all of this will hopefully motivate me to stick to my word and get back in the studio.