Augusta Read Thomas - Composer

Orchestra

Chamber Music

Chorus

Band

Dance and Ballet

Alphabetical Index

NUANCE - TRANSFORMATION - SPONTANEITY - GESTALT

"Although highly notated, precise, carefully structured, soundly proportioned, and while musicians are elegantly working from a nuanced, specific text, I like my music to have the feeling that it is organically being self-propelled - on the spot. As if we listeners are overhearing a captured improvisation.

"My music, which is organic and, at every level, concerned with transformations and connections, should be played so that the inner life of the different rhythmic, timbral and pitch syntaxes are made explicit and are then organically allied to one another with characterized phrasing of rhythm, color, harmony, counterpoint, tempo, keeping it alive — continuously sounding spontaneous.

"All of this, hopefully, working toward the fundamental goal: to compose a work in which every musical parameter is allied in one holistic gestalt."

— Augusta Read Thomas

For recordings of many complete works, please visit:

https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/arthomas/Public/

Find the work you want to hear, and then click on the link to play (files are in mp3, m4a, wav).

Augusta Read Thomas and Christoph Eschenbach

To obtain examination or performance material for any of Augusta Read Thomas's works, please contact G. Schirmer Inc..