Jacob Cooper (composer)


Jacob Mauney Cooper is an American composer living in Philadelphia, PA.

Biography

After attending Amherst College for his bachelor's degree in both geology and music, Cooper completed his graduate studies in composition at the Yale School of Music, and later formed the composers’ collective Sleeping Giant with several of his classmates. His works have been performed by the Calder Quartet, JACK Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble ACJW, NOW Ensemble, Dither Quartet, Living Earth Show, Carmina Slovenica, Mellissa Hughes, Timo Andres, Theo Bleckmann, Jodie Landau, Ashley Bathgate, and Vicky Chow.
Cooper's national awards include a Music Alive Residency Award from New Music USA, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Morton Gould Young Composer Award from ASCAP. He was also the winner of the 2011 Carsblad Music Festival Composers’ Competition and has been hailed by the New York Times as "richly talented" and by The New Yorker as a "maverick song composer."
Cooper is an Associate Professor at West Chester University and previously served on the faculty at Amherst College.

Works

Cooper's largest projects include Silver Threads, a song cycle for voice and electronic track released by Nonesuch Records, and Ripple the Sky, a work for voice and processed string octet commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. These works highlight Cooper's focus on slow development and the stretching of musical time. Many of Cooper's compositions involve live processing and electronics, and his interest in the digital realm extends to visual media: his video series Triptych was screened at the 2012 MATA Festival, and his piece Commencer une autre mort was shortlisted for the Guggenheim exhibit YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video.

Compositions and Projects

Opera and Vocal-Theater
Orchestral / large ensemble
Chamber
Solo
Video
Full albums
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