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Alex Wand

DMA Candidate in Composition

Alex Wand is a composer interested in folk music, multispecies flourishing, social practice art, and dance/multimedia collaborations. His music has been described as having “melody lines that can circle through one’s head for days after listening, begging to be rewound and re-listened and timbres and layers that are supremely joyful and poignant and at times absolutely laid bare in their sincerity” (New Classic LA). 

 

He is the founder of an underground online music community called Song A Day where he has posted over 600 original songs under the name Rufus Dumont. His music has been released on MicroFest Records, Hungry Badger Records, and Frog Peak Music (A Composers’ Collective). He studied music at the University of Michigan and at CalArts and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in music composition at UC Santa Cruz.

Research Interests: 

early music, futurism, songwriting, sound studies, acoustic ecology, just intonation

Selected Publications: 

On the Conception of Measure of Consonance (article) — Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 22, 2012

The Great Hunt (album) — Microfest Records, 2017

Carretera (album) — Symbol Records, 2020

Music for Dance 2017-2020 (album) — self-release, 2021

81 Tao Songs (Songbook) — Frog Peak Music, 2021

Mapping Sonic Futurities (article) — Refract, An Open Access Visual Studies Journal, Fall 2022

Honors and Awards: 

Grammy Award for Plectra and Percussion Dances, an album by the Partch Ensemble.

Education and Training: 
University of Michigan, BA // California Institute of the Arts, MFA
Teaching Interests: 

Songwriting

Field recording

Composition

Performance

Tuning systems

Acoustics