Title: Trailing Vortices
Commission: 1986
Completed: 1986
Instrumentation:
Premiere Location: Aspen Music Festival, CO
Premiere Ensemble:
Notes: Piece originally titled TV.

American composer William Susman has created a distinctively expressive voice in contemporary classical music, with a catalog that includes orchestral, chamber, and vocal music, as well as numerous film scores. In addition to his work as a composer, he spearheads the contemporary ensemble OCTET and Belarca Records. AllMusic calls him an exemplar of “the next developments in the sphere . . . [of] minimalism,” and textura describes him as “not averse to letting his affection for Afro-Cuban, jazz, and other forms seep into his creative output.” His music has earned praise from the New York Times for being “vivid, turbulent, and rich-textured,” from Gramophone as “texturally shimmering and harmonically ravishing,” and from Fanfare for being “crystalline . . . and gloriously lyrical.” Susman’s training as a pianist in both jazz and classical traditions was influential in his evolution as a composer, and his music is notable for its integration of a variety of influences, including free jazz, AfroCuban music, and other non-Western folk traditions. With this toolkit, he crafts a bold sound world both familiar and complex, with highly energetic grooves and hypnotic modal-based harmonies. His orchestral and chamber music has been widely performed in the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan. Susman’s music is uniquely suited to film, and he is recognized for scoring such award-winning works as Native New Yorker (Best Documentary Film, Tribeca Film Festival), which was honored in 2015 as one of the best in American experimental film by the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.