In recent music, his central focus is on the expressive and sonic relationships between acoustic and electronic sounds in ways that confront our ordinary assumptions about acoustic naturalness and the transparency of amplification and recording. By presenting these sounds so they are difficult to distinguish, his pieces create an uncanny experience of parsing interwoven layers of different sound types.
He is currently a level iii PhD candidate in music composition at the CUNY Graduate Center, where his research focuses on the music of Pierre Schaeffer. He received his bachelor’s in composition from SUNY Purchase. His primary teachers have been Suzanne Farrin, Jason Eckardt, Du Yun, Jeff Nichols, and Huang Ruo.
He currently teaches Music Technology & Performance at Hunter College, and Electroacoustic Music at Brooklyn College, where he has taught since 2014. As a Mellon Humanities Alliance Teaching Fellow, he works LaGuardia Community College as a sound designer in the theater department and previously taught Critical Thinking.
He is also a freelance audio engineer and sound designer. He has scored and sound designed plays, records and mixes chamber music, and enjoys working on songwriting, pop production, arrangements, and remixes.
[CV]
[audio engineering samples]
[press archive]
[email me ︎ jsmishalanie at gmail dot com]
︎eian kantor