Artist Statement
"The extremes are easy. Only the middle is a puzzle."
– Louise Gluck
My music lives in the middle. My music lives suspended between different traditions, styles, sound-worlds and communities.
Though I am a musician first and foremost, I am also a lover of photography and creative writing. I am an avid backpacker, a sailing enthusiast and an amateur astronomer. I am an admirer of architecture, aviation and infrastructure.
I share similarly eclectic musical interests. I am a classically trained composer, pianist and cellist, but I am also a passionate improviser who likes to create fugues on the spot. I am an impromptu percussionist who co-opts kitchen pots and pans for music-making, and I am a student enthralled by the physics of sound.
Informed by these diverse passions and interests, my compositions explore the fusion of wide-ranging, sometimes seemingly disparate ideas. I want my art and my artistry to connect contrasts and divides – some sonic, some societal – with clarity and nuance. My job as a composer, then, is to create bridges, spanning familiar and unfamiliar, old and new, in order to engage people from different backgrounds and perspectives. I strive to place my music in that precarious middle ground, pulled taut by extremes on all sides but ultimately anchored in the median. Only from the foundation of this delicate balance, I have found, are the merits of all extremes within reach.
Thus, in the greatest sense, I strive to make my music a force for connection and interrelation – a force for melding ideas, for bringing people together.
– Louise Gluck
My music lives in the middle. My music lives suspended between different traditions, styles, sound-worlds and communities.
Though I am a musician first and foremost, I am also a lover of photography and creative writing. I am an avid backpacker, a sailing enthusiast and an amateur astronomer. I am an admirer of architecture, aviation and infrastructure.
I share similarly eclectic musical interests. I am a classically trained composer, pianist and cellist, but I am also a passionate improviser who likes to create fugues on the spot. I am an impromptu percussionist who co-opts kitchen pots and pans for music-making, and I am a student enthralled by the physics of sound.
Informed by these diverse passions and interests, my compositions explore the fusion of wide-ranging, sometimes seemingly disparate ideas. I want my art and my artistry to connect contrasts and divides – some sonic, some societal – with clarity and nuance. My job as a composer, then, is to create bridges, spanning familiar and unfamiliar, old and new, in order to engage people from different backgrounds and perspectives. I strive to place my music in that precarious middle ground, pulled taut by extremes on all sides but ultimately anchored in the median. Only from the foundation of this delicate balance, I have found, are the merits of all extremes within reach.
Thus, in the greatest sense, I strive to make my music a force for connection and interrelation – a force for melding ideas, for bringing people together.
Bio
Fed by his insatiable creativity and inventive spirit, Liam Cummins writes music that pays homage to time-honored traditions while diving into unexplored territory. His many wide-ranging works include a string quartet honoring child Holocaust victims, an evening-length tone poem for orchestra created in response to the global pandemic, a piano quartet inspired by the accelerating effects of climate change, a cello choir written for more than thirty cellists, film scores, countless improvisations in a range of styles, and even a fanfare using only household objects as instruments.
Liam’s music has been shared by orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and students in the United States and beyond. He has also given numerous recitals at the piano, playing the classical repertoire, his own works, and a range of keyboard improvisations. He is a passionate advocate of concert music and seeks to share his love of the art form whenever possible, programming it in new forms and surprising venues.
Liam's music has been recognized widely for its inventiveness, orchestration and broad emotional range. He is the 2022 YoungArts Gold Winner in Classical Music, awarded by the National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists. He is also a winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the American Prize in Composition. His music has been shared on the public radio program The American Sound, and he has been a featured composer in both the Silent Voices Project and in Dolce Suono Ensemble's ComposerLab Flute. He is the only young composer in the country to have been nominated for consideration as a 2022 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.
Liam is pursuing a Bachelor of Music degree in composition at The Juilliard School, studying with John Corigliano. Liam previously studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory and the New England Conservatory. He has participated in numerous festivals and programs, including the Curtis Institute of Music’s Young Artist Summer Program, the Atlantic Music Festival, The Walden School, and the Cleveland Institute of Music's Young Composers Program. Through these programs he has studied with luminaries such as Martin Bresnick, David Ludwig, Pierre Jalbert, Reiko Füting, Melinda Wagner, George Tsontakis, Zhou Long, and Chen Yi.
When not creating or sharing music, you’ll likely find Liam in the natural world, camera and notebook in hand, seeking adventure at every opportunity. In turn, these experiences deepen and enrich his lifelong passion for music.
Liam’s music has been shared by orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists, and students in the United States and beyond. He has also given numerous recitals at the piano, playing the classical repertoire, his own works, and a range of keyboard improvisations. He is a passionate advocate of concert music and seeks to share his love of the art form whenever possible, programming it in new forms and surprising venues.
Liam's music has been recognized widely for its inventiveness, orchestration and broad emotional range. He is the 2022 YoungArts Gold Winner in Classical Music, awarded by the National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists. He is also a winner of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the American Prize in Composition. His music has been shared on the public radio program The American Sound, and he has been a featured composer in both the Silent Voices Project and in Dolce Suono Ensemble's ComposerLab Flute. He is the only young composer in the country to have been nominated for consideration as a 2022 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts.
Liam is pursuing a Bachelor of Music degree in composition at The Juilliard School, studying with John Corigliano. Liam previously studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory and the New England Conservatory. He has participated in numerous festivals and programs, including the Curtis Institute of Music’s Young Artist Summer Program, the Atlantic Music Festival, The Walden School, and the Cleveland Institute of Music's Young Composers Program. Through these programs he has studied with luminaries such as Martin Bresnick, David Ludwig, Pierre Jalbert, Reiko Füting, Melinda Wagner, George Tsontakis, Zhou Long, and Chen Yi.
When not creating or sharing music, you’ll likely find Liam in the natural world, camera and notebook in hand, seeking adventure at every opportunity. In turn, these experiences deepen and enrich his lifelong passion for music.