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About
short formal bio
Brendon Randall-Myers is a Brooklyn-based composer and guitarist working at various intersections of rock, experimental, theater, and classical music. His work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, New Music USA, New York State Council for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and been performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Chicago and Omaha Symphonies, Dither, and Friction Quartet. Brendon co-leads math rock band Marateck and multimedia avant-rock ensemble Invisible Anatomy, is a member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble, and performs regularly with avant-electric guitar quartet Dither. He has performed in clubs, concert halls, and basements around the world, including the Barbican Theatre (London), the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), and the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing).
artist statement
The foundation of my practice is formal composition animated and evolved through close collaboration with fellow performers. I center the capacity of time and repetition to redefine the limits of our bodies and minds, incorporating decades-long parallel practices of guitar study and distance running; a career performing rock, experimental, and classical music; research into sound perception, physiology, and instrumental history; and a life navigating similarity and difference as a Jew in West Virginia, Beijing and Brooklyn. Crystalizing intuition and emotion through discipline and structure, I iterate and amplify extreme musical meditations into deeply personal, album-length pieces.
My work evokes flow and trance states I’ve experienced in running competitions and intense musical performances, as well as the grounding effects of routines and physical endurance in the face of pain and grief. My music continuously iterates on concise ideas, slowly evolving and building over 10-30 minutes to moments of energetic release and catharsis. I create in close dialogues with other artists, drawing on our shared musical and personal histories. I use amplification and electronics to bring focus to otherwise imperceptible sonic details, and to create immersive, overwhelming listening experiences.
long formal bio/resume
Brendon Randall-Myers is a Brooklyn-based composer and guitarist who creates intricate and visceral music at various intersections of rock, experimental, theater, and classical. His work evokes trance and flow states experienced on 20-mile runs and in punk and metal performances, iterating and amplifying concise musical materials into extreme meditations.
Brendon’s compositional output has been described as “fiercely aggressive but endlessly compelling” (The San Francisco Chronicle), "intricate and dynamic" (I Care If You Listen), and "hauntingly beautiful" (Second Inversion), and includes works for classical musicians - pianists (Miki Sawada), string quartets (Friction Quartet), chamber ensembles (Exceptet), and orchestras (Omaha Symphony) - as well for cross-genre/experimental groups like Bang on a Can, Dither, and Bearthoven, and his own groups Marateck and Invisible Anatomy.
Current and upcoming projects include Grounding // Sparks, a 25’ chamber work commissioned by Chamber Music America for Warp Trio, premiered at Ursinus College in November 2021. Flail, a variable-length work of 15-60 minutes for modular synthesizer and Ableton Live, was commissioned by Adam Cuthbert and will premiere on Bang on a Can’s LONG PLAY Festival in May 2022. Aveilut, a 45-minute microtonal black metal album created with vocalist Doug Moore of NYC avant-metal bands Pyrrhon and Weeping Sores, will be released via The Flenser Records in July 2022. Aurora, a 45-minute piece created with cellist Jillian Blythe, will premiere in early 2023.
Recent projects include A Kind of Mirror, a 40-minute work written for pianist/ultramarathoner Miki Sawada that has been described as “a trance that’s always in motion…creating a physical and emotional sensation to ultimately make the listener feel as if they’re part of something larger than themselves” (Bandcamp Daily). Each of the piece’s five movements repeats and elaborates a single virtuosic musical idea, inspired by the duo’s shared experiences as distance runners and by Sawada’s incredible pianistic ability. The outer movements of the work were originally written as part of a theatrical show Brendon co-created with Sawada and director Daniel Pettrow, originally presented by Sawada as part of her 2018 tour, Gather Hear West Virginia. As part of the show, audience members joined Sawada onstage for conversation, storytelling, tea-making, and bubble-wrap popping. slashsound records released Sawada’s studio recording of the piece in 2021.
Dynamics of Vanishing Bodies, a 37-minute electric guitar quartet for Dither Quartet built around musical elements perceived by the ear and brain but not directly articulated by the performers, has been called “massive in its impact,” (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) “a wall of noise, intricate and varied,”(San Francisco Classical Voice) and “a thoughtfully organized exploration of electric guitar sound” (Wall Street Journal) that “manages to push Dither toward another state of being, transcendent of the name and beyond the implication of their instruments” (I Care If You Listen). Dynamics of Vanishing Bodies premiered at Roulette Intermedium in 2017 and has subsequently been performed by Dither at New Music New College (Sarasota, FL) and on Bang on a Can’s 2019 LOUD Weekend at Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA). New Focus Recordings released Dither’s studio recording of the piece in 2020.
Episodic Memory, a 30’ piece for NYC-based septet Exceptet inspired by the way the brain processes trauma and delving into just intonation, microtonality, and psychoacoustics, was presented at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn in 2017, with subsequent performances in New York and at Short North Stage in Columbus, OH, presented by the Johnstone Foundation.
Brendon's work has received support from New Music USA, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Roulette Intermedium, the American Composers Forum, Banff Centre, and Avaloch Farm, and he was the recipient of ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards in 2013 and 2014. His music appears on recordings on New Focus Recordings, New Amsterdam Records, Cantaloupe Records, Dad and Sons Records, Aerocade Music, and slashsound records.
As a performer of his own and others’ work, Brendon has an affinity for complex, cathartic, endurance-based music. He seeks out ongoing collaborations and situations where he can fully internalize the music he plays, aiming for memorization and multiple performances whenever possible.
Brendon co-leads two groups - Marateck and Invisible Anatomy - with whom he has toured throughout the US and China. Marateck is “a gripping math-rock band, combining shattered, wiry abstraction with moments of delicate atmosphere” (Tone Madison). The group operates as a DIY punk band performing complex, through-composed music from memory, self-financing their work and largely performing in rock clubs, basements, and bars throughout the East Coast and Midwest. William Covert of Circuit Sweet described Marateck’s debut album Time is Over as “my favorite math rock album of 2017...brings all the fury and complexity of 90’s era Don Caballero mixed with frantic angular riffs ala Shellac and Lynx while allowing tinges of metal, classical, and jazz to glisten through.”
Invisible Anatomy (IA) is an “avant-rock ensemble [that] combines the theatricality of performance art with the drama of jazz and classical music, creating haunting songs of danger [and] intimacy” (Second Inversion). IA’s five members co-compose and perform evening-length, conceptually unified multimedia pieces, which have been called “sometimes haunting sometimes hilarious and consistently mesmerizing” (I Care If You Listen). The group’s debut album Dissections, released via New Amsterdam Records, was named one of Second Inversion’s best albums of 2018. Most recently, IA created Illumination, a new show integrating music, light, and video, which we developed in collaboration with theater artist Michael McQuilken and premiered at The Cell Theater in February 2019, presented by Tribeca New Music.
Brendon has been a member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble since 2016. As a guitarist, he was part of performances of Branca’s The Third Ascension at The Kitchen, and premiering Branca’s last composition, The Light (for David), at Roulette Intermedium. He has conducted the group since Branca’s death in 2018.
Brendon has performed with Dither Quartet since 2012: performing on cranes on Governor’s Island alongside a Cantonese opera singer and a German beatboxer as part of Samson Young’s The Immortals; giving nearly 20 performances of Object Collection's It's All True, a 100' opera-in-suspension based on the complete live archives of iconic underground band Fugazi; improvising an hour of doom metal to accompany Yve Laris Cohen’s work PS.122 at Performance Space New York; and performing a 13-guitar rendition of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint at The Barbican Center, on Lincoln Center Out of Doors, WNYC New Sounds Live, and on the Ellnora Guitar Festival.
As a freelancer, Brendon has performed with orchestras (China Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony), indie bands (Magik*Magik, Fay Kueen, Ecce Shnak), new music groups (Ensemble Signal, Contemporaneous), and in opera pits (Opera Saratoga, Experiments in Opera). He has scored several short films (Docked, We The Economy: Recession); does freelance work as a music engraver, arranger, sound engineer; and maintains an active private teaching studio.
Brendon grew up homeschooled in rural West Virginia, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Pomona College (B.A. Music), La Universidad de Chile, and the Yale School of Music (M.M., Composition). His mentors in composition include Martin Bresnick, David Lang, and Kurt Rohde. He ran varsity track and cross country throughout his college years, regularly covering between 70-90 miles a week and running a 4:37 mile and a 15:23 5k. He experienced his first mosh pit as a high school freshman at a show by the legendary mathcore band Converge in Worchester, MA, and hasn't been quite the same since.