Chris Jose ’11
Chris Jose ’11 was commissioned to compose a piece for an experimental ballet video that was shown in March on a large screen in the opera house in Copenhagen as part of a program with the Royal Danish Ballet.
Jose has been composing experimental violin music, which he features on his SoundCloud page. He was contacted by Obscura, a visual and video scenography company based in Denmark, and asked to compose music for the video.
Listen to the classical intro
Listen to the experimental section
A mathematics-economics graduate, Jose is an actuarial analyst at Crum & Forster, a property and casualty insurance company in Morristown, N.J. He performed in the Lafayette College Orchestra and Marquis Consort.
“Based on my experiences, the driving force behind succeeding in math and music—and anything else for that matter—is how badly one desires to succeed in them,” he says. “Mastery only comes about through practice. The quantity and quality of one’s practicing is based on the level of commitment one has towards the activity.”
The completed work, which incorporates elements of previous compositions as well as completely new music, was shaped to fit the four-minute video.
Jose plans to continue experimenting and is working on juxtaposing and melding violin with non-traditional musical environments, such as hip hop and electronic music.
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