We are raising funds to support the world premiere recording of my symphonic workLATENCY CANONS. Described as “entrancing…surreally beautiful…ecstatic…[and] rapturous” (New York Times) and “inspired…arresting…[and] hauntingly beautiful” (Slate),LATENCY CANONS premiered simultaneously at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Royal College of Music, UK. LATENCY CANONS takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary, connecting musicians in far flung places via the Internet, in a new kind of live music-making experience, while embracing the imperfections of internet connections as not just an inevitable nuisance but the very source of its ethereal polyphony. LATENCY CANONS puts to use internet latency (delays), and fizzing digital distortions, to build an enthralling new live music soundscape.
Scored for chamber orchestra and four remote string quartets, LATENCY CANONS makes innovative expressive use of now-ubiquitous Web video chat technology, and uses the Web’s instabilities and delays as the piece’s very polyphonic factors. Ensembles in different places around the world play simple lines together, using ordinary chat software, and the random blips and delays themselves create a counterpoint of unexpected relationships; a [beautiful] polyphonic swirl unfolds as music arrives from all around. Together with the sonic granulation from the software, the music takes on a cavernous quality that is strangely evocative, as if musicians are coming together in a huge digital cathedral that stretches around the globe.
This landmark new work will be recorded and made available in a world class premiere recording featuring Juno Award-winning and Grammy-nominated Metropolis Ensemble and rising-star quartet Senza Misura.
Four-time Grammy Award-winning producer Tim Martyn will be working with me and the orchestra throughout the entire recording process and the critical post-production phase to create a recording of sonic depth and crystalline beauty. We’re all hoping you’ll consider helping us toward our goal with a contribution toward this key aspect of creating a great recording. We want to give Tim Martyn all the time and room he needs to work his sonic wonders.
New York, NY
Member since: March 25, 2015
My name is Ray Lustig. I’m a composer and teacher, and I’m incredibly passionate about music. Music has the power to help us explore realms that can’t be explored in words, to understand ourselves more deeply, to recall long buried memories, to give birth to lasting new ones, to bring us together in ways nothing else can, to heal our hearts, to elevate our souls. Humanity and music are hand in hand. We need to make music because we are human, and we are only human because we make music. It is essential to the fiber of our being. As a former scientist, I find that my music is deeply inspired by science, nature, and the mind. I am incredibly lucky to be able to work with some of the world’s finest musicians in my hometown of New York City, and to help nurture the next generation of fine musicians in my teaching at the Juilliard School. But spreading the joy of music happens everywhere in my life, from teaching in public schools and giving master classes to improvising with neighbors, friends, and their children, and dancing with my daughter to the sounds of buskers on the subways platforms.
Here’s a little more on my background:
“Lustig is writing music charged with intensity and leavened with intelligence,” wrote the American Academy of Arts and Letters in awarding composer and Juilliard faculty member Ray Lustig its prestigious Charles Ives Fellowship. His music has been hailed as “entrancing…surreally beautiful…ecstatic… [and] rapturous” by the New York Times. A recipient of ASCAP’s Rudolph Nissim Prize, the Aaron Copland Award from Copland House, and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has been commissioned and supported by American Composers Orchestra, The Carnegie-Juilliard-Weill Academy, Town Hall Seattle, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, Metropolis Ensemble, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New Music USA, and New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute. Performers have also included Grand Rapids Symphony, the Juilliard Orchestra, Bowling Green Philharmonia, cellist Joshua Roman, tenor Nicholas Phan, American Opera Projects, New Juilliard Ensemble, and the Da Capo Chamber Players.
Lustig completed his DMA at The Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano, Robert Beaser, and Samuel Adler. Other teachers have included Derek Bermel, Conrad Cummings, and Shirish Korde.
Before returning to his lifelong passion for music, Lustig spent several years in molecular and cell biology research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Columbia University.
He currently lives with his wife and daughter in New York, where he composes and teaches at The Juilliard School.