Works

Matthew Chamberlain’s music lov­ing­ly explores a crit­i­cal rela­tion­ship with the expres­sive tropes of late Roman­tic music. Cre­at­ed through a com­bi­na­tion of intu­itive and algo­rith­mic work, his music imper­fect­ly traces tri­adic pro­gres­sions through micro­ton­al­ly expand­ed har­mon­ic space, inscrib­ing the famil­iar with­in the con­tin­gent. In per­for­mance, Chamberlain’s pieces cre­ate dra­mas of affect and expec­ta­tion: As the musi­cians strive to project a roman­tic ide­al of expres­sion through bar­ri­ers of tech­ni­cal and tim­bral insta­bil­i­ty, the audi­ence is asked to empathize dou­bly with the per­form­ers and the affec­tive jour­ney of the music itself, to love and for­give its many fail­ures to pro­duce some­thing nor­ma­tive­ly beautiful.