Louis GOLDFORD is a composer of instrumental and mixed music based in New York City. His works are characterized by processes of emergence and approximation, interwoven psychoanalytic and existential formal models, and traversals of abstract resonances and virtual spaces which, at times, have involved data sonification and experimental approaches to orchestration. Louis is the recipient of a 2021 Fromm Commission from Harvard University, and in 2022 Louis was awarded the ACTOR Project Research-Creation Grant along with a cohort of music perception scholars in Montréal to carry out a novel study in vocal timbre, which will result in the creation of a new work in 2024. In 2019 Louis completed his Cursus at IRCAM, supported by the Fulbright Commission in France. Louis has been a Laureate of the Voix Nouvelles of Fondation Royaumont and is a Laureate and resident composer of the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. Recent performances include those by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Linea, Wet Ink, the Talea Ensemble, Longleash, Yarn/Wire, Fonema Consort, the JACK Quartet, and Ensemble Dal Niente, among others. Upcoming commissions include new works for the Wavefield Ensemble and Ensemble Pi in New York City.
Louis’ works have been featured at Royaumont Abbey, IRCAM’s ManiFESTE, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Northwestern University New Music Conference, the International Computer Music Conference, June in Buffalo, Contemporary Encounters with Meitar Ensemble and Ensemble Modern in Tel Aviv, the Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival in Spain, the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States National Conference, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at New England Conservatory, the Composit New Music Festival in Italy, and the New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival. He was named the winner of the 2017 Suzhou (Chou’s) Composition Commission. Louis has also performed as a saxophonist in Taiwan, Poland, and the United States. His work Uncanny Valley (2014) for large orchestra was given Honorable Mentions at the 2017 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute and the 2015 American Composers Orchestra / Underwood New Music Readings, and in 2014 Louis was the recipient of a Dean’s Prize in Music Composition at Indiana University. Louis formerly completed the Computer Music Workshop (Atelier d’informatique musicale) while studying at the IRCAM Académie and festival ManiFESTE in 2013. He was also a finalist in the 2013 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards for his Eric, Rising (2012) for orchestra.
Louis is currently a Dean’s Fellow at Columbia University, where he studies with Georg Friedrich Haas, Zosha Di Castri, Brad Garton, George Lewis, and Fred Lerdahl.
Louis Goldford // composer 