

ABOUT
Patrick Gibson is a composer, educator, and electric guitarist based in Anaheim, CA. He holds a PhD in Digital Music Composition from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), Riverside, CA; an M.M. in Music Composition from the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University Long Beach (BCCM-CSULB), Long Beach, CA; an M.Ed. in Cross-Cultural Education from National University (NU), La Jolla, CA; and a B.A. in Music Theory and Voice from Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Los Angeles, CA. He composes and conducts concert music for the Martians Chamber Group; composes concert music for soloists, chamber ensembles, concert bands, and orchestras; conducts and directs elementary and middle school choirs; and performs his original songs with his band, Kirk Out. He composes customized media music for clients upon request, as well as for academic projects. He is General Music Teacher and Choir Director for Cubberley, Fremont, and Henry Schools in the Long Beach Unified School District, in Long Beach, CA.
His compositions include: Improvisations Based on Noah Berger's Shooting Low for the California Photography Museum's Exhibit, Facing Fire: Art, Wildfire, and the End of Nature in the New West, Riverside, CA; Nexus: Music for a Shadow Animation for Chamber Orchestra, which was premiered by the Martians Chamber Group at Sound and Fury Presents: Martians! at ArtShareL.A., Los Angeles, CA; Watercolor and Blue Sky for Orchestra, which was recorded by the UCR Orchestra at UCR, Arts 157, and was also recorded by the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia at Temple University; ¡Vale! Panegyric for Spain, which was premiered by Gerardo López at Sound and Fury Presents Gerardo López and Jennifer Wright at Art Share LA; Three Études for Electric Guitar and Electronics, premiered by the composer on electric guitar at the UCR EARS Lab Tenth Anniversary Celebration and Concert; Cello Sonata, No. 2, premiered at Sound and Fury Presents: Maksim Velichkin + Special Guests; and Sonata for Electric Guitar, which Gibson performed on electric guitar with Michael Aburas on electric bass, for Music@MiMoDa, at MiMoDa Studio, Los Angeles, CA.
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His Mars Chamber Symphony for modified Pierrot ensemble was premiered at the Lineage Performing Arts Center in Pasadena, CA, and later performed at UCR Is Composing in the Performance Lab at UCR. The "Kyrie" movement of Gibson's Missa Familiae Sanctae for Pierrot Ensemble and Chorus was premiered at the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall, BCCM-CSULB, and the complete Mass was later premiered at the same venue. Parts of his score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis were performed by Dr. Gary Barnett, piano, accompanied by a digital orchestra, programmed by the composer, at the Performance Lab, UCR. The premiere of the complete work, Music Inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), was later given by Dr. Barnett at the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts, Riverside, CA, for the Metropolis Multi-Media Event (part of Pacific Standard Time and Mundos Alternos), given by UCR’s Departments of Literature, Music, History of Art and ARTSblock. At that event’s symposium, Gibson gave a talk on his compositional methodology for Music Inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Gibson's piece, White Petals Strewn throughout the Winter Garden for traditional Korean instruments, was given its world premiere by ensemblePHASE from South Korea on their North American tour, SPREAD II @USA. His string quartet, Speed Metal through the Viewfinder, was workshopped in a one-on-one session with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet for the Composition Department at BCCM-CSULB under the direction of Dr. Alan Shockley, read by the Friction Quartet on stage at the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall, and later premiered by members of the BCCM-CSULB Orchestra at the same venue. He also collaborated with colleagues from the BCCM-CSULB on the score for Justine Prebich's animated short film, Game Child, which was screened at the 2015 CSU Media Arts Festival on the campus of California State University, Los Angeles.
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His works have been performed by members of the California E.A.R. Unit, flutist Sarah Carrier, the Robin Cox Trio, HUB New Music Ensemble, Transient Canvas, the Argus Quartet, the Eclipse Quartet, the Mojave Trio, the Friction Quartet, the PHAZE Ensemble, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, ensemble Fret, the Martians Chamber Group, ensemblePHAZE (South Korea), pianist Dr. Soo Lee Biancalana, pianist Dr. Christian Dubeau, flutist Gerardo López, guitarist Pedro López de la Osa, and harpist Gracie Sprout.
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Gibson's dissertation research focused on exploring the evidence of modernist compositional methodologies as employed in the media scores of the Disney Composers of the 1940s-1980s, and his current musicological research is an expansion of his work in this area. His dissertation, "Tonal-Serial Hybridity in the Works of Three Composers of the Walt Disney Studios with an Analysis of Patrick Gibson's Nexus-Music for a Shadow Animation for Chamber Orchestra" (2020), can be accessed in its entirety in the University of California eScholarship database at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1g17b2jz. Dr. Ian Dicke was chair of his Dissertation Committee and his principal composition teacher at UCR. Dr. Paulo C. Chagas (UCR) and Dr. Roger Hickman (BCCM-CSULB) were dissertation committee members, advising on research focused on electronic music and media scores, respectively. Gibson's masters thesis, "Missa Familiae Sanctae: A Project Report" (2015), focused on his employment of some of Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein's compositional methodologies in the thesis's titular work, through an analysis of Stravinsky's Mass (1948) and Bernstein's Mass: A Theatre Piece for Players, Singers, and Dancers (1971). It can be accessed on ProQuest at https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/pubnum/1591630.html. Dr. Raymond Torres-Santos served as chair of his Thesis Committee, with Dr. Alicia Doyle and Dr. Martin Herman serving as committee members.
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Gibson has studied Composition privately with John Elg (Media Composer), Brian Head (University of Southern California), Dr. Carolyn Bremer (BCCM-CSULB), Dr. Alan Shockley (BCCM-CSULB), and as a graduate student at the BCCM-CSULB with Dr. Adriana Verdié de Vas-Romero and Dr. Raymond Torres-Santos. He also studied, as a graduate student at UCR, with Dr. Paulo C. Chagas.
ROCK
// My Albums, My Bands, and My Electric Guitar
As a rock artist, I write hard rock that is largely informed, musically, by my main influences, the Who, Weezer, Cream, Black Sabbath, and David Bowie. My goal is to try and push the expressivity of electric guitar solos within that genre. I find songwriting to be a positive means of dealing with life's challenges. Sometimes, there is nothing to do about a situation but write a song, and the song often makes it possible to move on and recall the beauty in my life. I have, to date, recorded, produced, and released three albums of original material, available for streaming and purchase on all major sites.
I perform these songs with my band, Kirk Out. We are a hard rock power trio, and each of us in the band is attracted to this instrumentation because of its flexibility and the demands it places on us, as players. We have performed locally in venues like the Doll Hut, Malone's, the Olde Shippe, the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall, and the HFC Fiesta.
CONCERT MUSIC
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Most of my recent activity as a composer has been in the concert music field, and I have found unending inspiration in writing for my chamber group, the Martians, as well as for numerous ensembles and soloists. I completely enjoy the process of composing, which involves, for me, listening to that inner composer's voice and trying to follow where it leads. I love the activity of crafting and shaping the material that I hear and then solving the problems that inevitably come along the way. My goal in composing a piece is always to maximize my ability to express emotions and ideas and write music that musicians find inspiring to play. I love collaborating with musicians and working as much of their personality as I can into my pieces.
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It has been my great fortune to be involved in the Sound and Fury Concert Series for the past few years and, thanks to the encouragement of series directors, Christian Dubeau and Christine Lee, I have seen many of my works performed on dynamic programs of new music in Los Angeles. It was on a Sound and Fury program that the Martians made their debut, and it is my honor to be involved with such a fine group of musicians and such a vital concert series.