always need some kind of melody. It comes from listening to oldies and Motown because all those melodies are so strong and memorable they just stick with you. That is something I still incorporate. The sound world I create is dark and it comes from working with extremes of human emotion. For example, one of my recent pieces, Reach for string quartet, was influenced by Mount Everest and people who go through hell in order to climb it. The threat of death is constantly present and can come at any minute. If you happen to freeze to death, there is no way to get your body off the mountain. So if you die on Everest, you're there forever. This puts such a strong imagine in my mind as a composer.» (N. Omiccioli) His work list includes various other compositions which are still worksin-progress: Insights No. 2 (2010) for solo piano, New Work (2010) for string quartet and piano, and Cries From Oblivion (2010) for flute, violoncello, and piano. For Omiccioli, the music is «always evolving and the process takes me a long time to figure out. Sometimes a certain type of material just isn't working with a process I'm using. Each piece gets closer and closer to what I want to accomplish but I'm sure it will take my whole career to actually figure out.» (N. Omiccioli) In the vast panorama of compositional poetics, French spectral music and composers such as Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Hugues Dufourt, are often models for young composers. There are traces of this influence in the works of Alican Camci, Riho Maimets, Nicholas Omiccioli, Yonatan Cna’an, and others. However, in Omiccioli’s works it originated from his fascination with Witold Lutosławski and the vertical sonorities he used to generate pitch materials. «In my own writing, I am interested in artificial and synthetic constructs similar to what Lutosławski was doing, unlike Gérard Grisey’s and Tristan Murail’s processes; both used computers to analyze true sound spectrums. I have also been using numerical processes in order to generate rhythms. Rather than being hypercritical on every aspect, I can create a process that helps me generate material so I only have to think about the overall form of the piece.» (N. Omiccioli) ETHAN BRAUN (Peabody Conservatory) is a composer and pianist currently living and working in Los Angeles, California. Braun has broad experience in numerous musical settings spanning multiple genres; experiences that inform his overall compositional approach. His formal education in jazz and classical piano, and his improvised work with
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