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Sarah Gibson is a Los Angeles-based composer whose works have received recognition including the Victor Herbert ASCAP award, NFMC Marion Richter American Music Composition Award, and first place in the 2010 Percussive Arts Society Composition Contest. Gibson has performed with and had compositions performed by members of eighth blackbird, the What’s Next? Ensemble, the University of Southern California (USC) Symphony, and USC Thornton Edge, among others. Most recently, Sarah co-founded a new music piano duo, HOCKET. HOCKET and has performed with the Boston-based Firebird Ensemble, at the Bang on a Can Music Festival, Carlsbad Music Festival, the San Francisco Center for New Music, and held residency at Avaloch Farms Institute.
Sarah received B.M. degrees in Composition and Piano from Indiana University and a M.M. and D.M.A. in Composition, both at USC. Currently, she is a lecturer at USC and is the Teaching Artist for the esteemed Composer Fellowship Program and Associate Composer Program with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Artistic Director, Andrew Norman.
Sarah writes:
If one were to ask my grandmother to talk about her life, she’d choose to narrate it by walking through her home telling the story of how she and my grandfather found each antique, trinket, and piece of furniture that completes their life together. One piece she particularly treasures is her grandfather clock; and an especially meaningful moment in my life was when she asked my husband to wind the clock for her, as I had seen my grandfather do countless times before. Talking to the Time introduces motives and melodies throughout the piece that build upon each other the way one tells a story. Each new melody or section has come from something that has previously occurred as it develops further into the piece. Just as my grandmother walks through her house telling her life story, each piece inspiring a different chapter, so too does this music continuously build on its own narrative.
I died happy in my sleep…
Our children around and you looking down
from heaven’s a julep on the porch…
You and me rocking the grandfather clock is tick tick talking
to the time we used to wind it
–Punch Brothers