Composer and New Music Pianist
Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is an internationally performed composer and new music pianist. A native of Philadelphia, he has premiered his music across the United States, Berlin, Germany, and Pavia, Italy. The Minnesota Orchestra, the Indiana University Concert Orchestra, the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, the Percussion Ensembles of Indiana University and the University of Buffalo have performed his music, among others. Brian has worked with conductors Osmo Vänskä, David Effron, and Elliot Bark, sopranos Sharon Harms and Amanda DeBoer, and pianists Charles Abramovic, Matthew Gianforte, and Jean-Francois Proulx in performances of his music. Upcoming performances include commissioned premieres of two works: Blank Slate (2012) for the percussion quartet Square Peg Round Hole--a piece consisting entirely of "found" instruments, which includes a movement called Vegetable Requiem, and The Einstein Slide (2012), an appendix to Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities (2011), inspired by a slice of Albert Einstein's brain found in the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, written for Alarm Will Sound at the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival.
The orchestral premiere of his doctoral dissertation, Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities, received the following review by Peter Jacobi of the Bloomington Herald Times: "Just listening brought moments of sheer excitement from how imaginatively the composer used his skills in orchestration to suggest chaos and furor, mystery and alarm, sympathy and wonder". Brian’s Second Piano Sonata has received both national and international recognition, winning the 2008 National Federation of Music Clubs Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Award and the 2011 American Liszt Society’s Bicentennial Composition Competition. Also a composer of electronic music, his work Waterclocks was selected for a performance at the 2009 SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) National Conference.
Brian is a graduate of the doctoral program in music composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He studied composition with P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Don Freund, John Gibson (electro-acoustic), Jeffrey Hass (electro-acoustic), and Sven-David Sandström at IU, with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin, with Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, and Richard Brodhead at Temple University, and privately with Richard Wernick. He studied piano with Charles Abramovic, Lambert Orkis, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn at Temple University, and at the Darlington Arts Center with Benjamin Whitten and Harue Sato.
Brian has performed and recorded all of his works for piano, premiered Bells for piano and iPod at Temple University by Paul Geissinger, premiered a piano trio by Maurice Wright in Carnegie Hall, and recorded a professionally produced CD of new chamber works by Emiliano Pardo-Tristán. During his concurrent Master's degrees in composition and piano performance at Temple University, he was awarded a Contemporary Music Performance Specialist Graduate Assistantship in Piano, leading to world premiere collaborations with graduate students in the composition program. His Master’s degree piano recital at Temple University included a from-memory performance of Richard Wernick’s Piano Sonata No. 1, a performance that received an international review by Bernard Jacobson, who said: “Brian Ciach is not a master merely in the sense of academic certification, but a pianist, and a musician, you will want to get to know. I assure you that it is a name you will be hearing much of in the not too distant future.”
As an educator, Brian has been an Adjunct Instructor in the theory and composition department at West Chester University, an Associate Instructor in music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and is currently an Adjunct Instructor in the music theory and composition department at Ball State University. He has taught piano through a graduate assistantship at Temple University and has been on the piano faculty at Delaware County Community College, the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, and at the Darlington Arts Center.
The orchestral premiere of his doctoral dissertation, Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities, received the following review by Peter Jacobi of the Bloomington Herald Times: "Just listening brought moments of sheer excitement from how imaginatively the composer used his skills in orchestration to suggest chaos and furor, mystery and alarm, sympathy and wonder". Brian’s Second Piano Sonata has received both national and international recognition, winning the 2008 National Federation of Music Clubs Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Award and the 2011 American Liszt Society’s Bicentennial Composition Competition. Also a composer of electronic music, his work Waterclocks was selected for a performance at the 2009 SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) National Conference.
Brian is a graduate of the doctoral program in music composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He studied composition with P.Q. Phan, Claude Baker, Don Freund, John Gibson (electro-acoustic), Jeffrey Hass (electro-acoustic), and Sven-David Sandström at IU, with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin, with Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, and Richard Brodhead at Temple University, and privately with Richard Wernick. He studied piano with Charles Abramovic, Lambert Orkis, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn at Temple University, and at the Darlington Arts Center with Benjamin Whitten and Harue Sato.
Brian has performed and recorded all of his works for piano, premiered Bells for piano and iPod at Temple University by Paul Geissinger, premiered a piano trio by Maurice Wright in Carnegie Hall, and recorded a professionally produced CD of new chamber works by Emiliano Pardo-Tristán. During his concurrent Master's degrees in composition and piano performance at Temple University, he was awarded a Contemporary Music Performance Specialist Graduate Assistantship in Piano, leading to world premiere collaborations with graduate students in the composition program. His Master’s degree piano recital at Temple University included a from-memory performance of Richard Wernick’s Piano Sonata No. 1, a performance that received an international review by Bernard Jacobson, who said: “Brian Ciach is not a master merely in the sense of academic certification, but a pianist, and a musician, you will want to get to know. I assure you that it is a name you will be hearing much of in the not too distant future.”
As an educator, Brian has been an Adjunct Instructor in the theory and composition department at West Chester University, an Associate Instructor in music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and is currently an Adjunct Instructor in the music theory and composition department at Ball State University. He has taught piano through a graduate assistantship at Temple University and has been on the piano faculty at Delaware County Community College, the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, and at the Darlington Arts Center.