Composition grad playing with ideas, winning awards
“You have to seize the opportunities when they come your way,” Nick Storring (BMus ‘05) says, which explains his busy schedule, his diverse music and his broad job title—he lists his occupation(s) in outgoing emails as: cellist/composer/electronic musician/music journalist.
At Laurier, Storring was a composition major, studying primarily with Dr. Peter Hatch; he also studied cello with Paul Pulford. Now, music is his day job as he performs in various ensembles, sound designs theatre projects, and writes for Musicworks and Exclaim!
Storring is most lauded these days for his work as a composer. He received the Canadian Music Centre’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award last year and is approached for new work almost monthly—a few weeks ago, he received a commission from Arraymusic, one of his favourite ensembles. In 2011, he released his first CD, Rife, and he is soon to complete his MFA thesis in music composition at York University.
“My aesthetic is all over the place” Storring says. His compositions are varied, formed by an interesting process that marries whimsy with ideas. When making music, he’ll grab an instrument off his shelf—more than 100 reside there—and start improvising, exploring, not just new melodies, but new ways of playing. To this end, he often speaks with other musicians to discover techniques that result in new sounds. Recently, he employed practice mutes (the device instrumentalists use to rehearse in hotels) in a few of his chamber compositions, fascinated by its sound.
In his electroacoustic piece Artifacts, Storring played a melody on violin then dubbed it back and forth between cassettes many times, playing with the pause button to warp the sound. What resulted sounded like an archival folk recording, playing with history. “I love the idea of false quotation,” Storring says, explaining his frequent practice of distorting something vaguely familiar to the listener to subvert expectation.
Storring admits his inspirations include “really cheesy music” such as Bollywood soundtracks from the 50s and 80s (which he says contain sophisticated arrangements). He likes to push boundaries, “not in a post-modern exercise, but to be evocative, not just intellectual,” he says.
Storring attributes his success as a composer in part to his appetite and aptitude for all things musical and to his skill at playing the cello. “In recent years, I’ve taken responsibility for developing my own technical rubric for playing cello,” he says. “I think of myself as a composer, not a cello player, but I think my performing gets me noticed—I’m not just a composer working in isolation in my studio.”
For more details and samples of work, please visit: www.nickstorring.ca
At Laurier, Storring was a composition major, studying primarily with Dr. Peter Hatch; he also studied cello with Paul Pulford. Now, music is his day job as he performs in various ensembles, sound designs theatre projects, and writes for Musicworks and Exclaim!
Storring is most lauded these days for his work as a composer. He received the Canadian Music Centre’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award last year and is approached for new work almost monthly—a few weeks ago, he received a commission from Arraymusic, one of his favourite ensembles. In 2011, he released his first CD, Rife, and he is soon to complete his MFA thesis in music composition at York University.
“My aesthetic is all over the place” Storring says. His compositions are varied, formed by an interesting process that marries whimsy with ideas. When making music, he’ll grab an instrument off his shelf—more than 100 reside there—and start improvising, exploring, not just new melodies, but new ways of playing. To this end, he often speaks with other musicians to discover techniques that result in new sounds. Recently, he employed practice mutes (the device instrumentalists use to rehearse in hotels) in a few of his chamber compositions, fascinated by its sound.
In his electroacoustic piece Artifacts, Storring played a melody on violin then dubbed it back and forth between cassettes many times, playing with the pause button to warp the sound. What resulted sounded like an archival folk recording, playing with history. “I love the idea of false quotation,” Storring says, explaining his frequent practice of distorting something vaguely familiar to the listener to subvert expectation.
Storring admits his inspirations include “really cheesy music” such as Bollywood soundtracks from the 50s and 80s (which he says contain sophisticated arrangements). He likes to push boundaries, “not in a post-modern exercise, but to be evocative, not just intellectual,” he says.
Storring attributes his success as a composer in part to his appetite and aptitude for all things musical and to his skill at playing the cello. “In recent years, I’ve taken responsibility for developing my own technical rubric for playing cello,” he says. “I think of myself as a composer, not a cello player, but I think my performing gets me noticed—I’m not just a composer working in isolation in my studio.”
For more details and samples of work, please visit: www.nickstorring.ca
