Bio
Steven Swartz is a composer whose music explores the interplay of sound and silence, form and memory, intention and process. Possessing “an instinct for sensuous color-blends” (Buffalo News), Swartz creates musical landscapes that evolve unpredictably as they move through time, like cloud formations across the sky.
His works have been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles, including String Noise, Numinous, Aperture Duo, Momenta Quartet, RighteousGIRLS, and the Sorce/Lodge Duo. Other prominent performers include pianists Marilyn Nonken, Margaret Leng-Tan, and Yvar Mikhashoff; cellist Frances-Marie Uitti; and percussionists David Cossin and Jonathan Haas.
During his teens Swartz performed professionally as a singer/songwriter in his native upstate New York. Following studies in music and philosophy at Swarthmore College, he earned a PhD in Composition at University at Buffalo under principal teacher Morton Feldman. Wrote Kyle Gann in the Village Voice, “Feldman’s students will render his critics irrelevant… “Listen to [the] thoughtful chord permutations of Steven Swartz.”
In the mid-80s Swartz formed the “avant-folk” ensemble Songs from a Random House, which released two critically acclaimed albums on the Bar/None and Sargasso labels before disbanding in 2006. Alex Ross described the group’s second album, gListen (2004), as “bright, quirky, tuneful.”
In recent years he has made a striking return to concert music, with five major scores since 2020: Corduroy (guitar and piano) for the Sorce/Lodge Duo; 10 Narrow Trees for Small Gardens (flute and prepared piano), written for RighteousGIRLS; Any minute, now (large ensemble), composed for Joseph C. Phillips’ Numinous ensemble; and merger, an 13-minute duo for violin and viola, commissioned by the Los Angeles-based Aperture Duo, who premiered it in April 2024.
His most recent works are When the horizon has a mind of its own, a 23-minute score commissioned by pianist Marilyn Nonken for herself and percussionist Jonathan Haas, and Air lines (2025), an extended-technique duo for diatonic and chromatic harmonicas.
Steven Swartz is also the founder of Dotdotdotmusic, a public relations firm devoted to new classical music, and a founding board member of the free, citywide Make Music New York festival. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.
