Phillip Golub

Composer Phillip Golub makes music that straddles the boundary between notated and improvised. Trained in both classical composition and jazz, he draws on both traditions in his avant-garde works. Golub was born on June 1, 1993, and grew up in Pacific Palisades in suburban Los Angeles. As a child, he showed a gift for experimentation on the household piano, and he also devoured his father's jazz record collection. He attended Crossroads High School in Santa Monica, where he was able to study both classical music and jazz. Golub garnered a place in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Composer Fellowship Program and also performed in a jazz combo at the Colburn School. He went on to a five-year program administered by Harvard University and the New England Conservatory, wherein he earned a B.A. in English at Harvard and an M.M. in jazz performance at the Conservatory. Golub earned an additional master's degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and he had lessons with Michael Finnissy and Julian Anderson in composition. In piano and improvisation, he studied with Jason Moran, Bruce Brubaker, Joe Morris, and Ran Blake. For four years, he attended the YellowBarn Young Artists Program in Vermont. Early notice came in 2013 when the National Children's Chorus performed his song cycle Weathered and Revealed at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. The following year, the New York Virtuoso Singers performed his choral work God's List of Liquids, set to a text by Anne Carson, at Merkin Hall in Manhattan. In addition to its improvisatory aspects, Golub's music draws on jazz in, to use his words, "rethinking the rehearsal process as a site of musical sociality and collective creation." His works have been performed at major festivals in both the U.S. and Britain, and he has regularly played jazz with the Cecil McBee Quartet. Golub performed with the Sarafand Ensemble and, in 2020, formed his own group, Tropos, which released the album Axioms // 75ab on the Biophilia label that year. In 2022, he released his debut solo album, Filters, with himself as pianist; the work explores the nature of musical repetition and exists in both keyboard and chamber ensemble versions.
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