McCormack, Timothy

Timothy McCormack (1984) writes haptic, viscous music which makes audible the tactile, physical relationship between a performer and their instrument. Sometimes ecstatic, sometimes hermetic, their music threads an intimacy between tone and noise to create strangely affecting sonic ecologies which alter one’s perception of time. They also engage with contemporary queer aesthetics: hæmal ancestries, incurable disease and its histories, mourning, listening, and the erotics of form.

They have been commissioned by ensembles such as: Ensemblekollektiv Berlin, Klangforum Wien, the JACK Quartet, the Schallfeld Ensemble, musikFabrik, the ELISION Ensemble, Curious Chamber Players, and MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik; and organizations or festivals such as: Eclat, the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, and the impuls Festival. Their work can be heard on the record labels Kairos, Another Timbre, and Huddersfield Contemporary Records.

McCormack is the recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composers’ Prize (2018). They won the Impuls International Composition Competition (2019) which resulted in a new work for Vienna’s Klangforum Wien.

McCormack currently teaches at University of California San Diego (UCSD), where they are Assistant Professor of Composition. They received their PhD from Harvard University, and also hold degrees from the University of Huddersfield and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.