Press

Ethan Isaac (b. 1996) is a composer working in just intonation, electroacoustic composition, and multimedia practice. Recent work has been performed by ~Nois at the Andy Warhol Museum and by the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra. They are a PhD candidate in composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh.

Ethan Isaac (b. 1996) is a composer working in just intonation, electroacoustic composition, and multimedia practice that pairs their music with their own original cinematography. Their work has been performed at Le Poisson Rouge and the Andy Warhol Museum, and by ensembles including ~Nois, the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra, and the HELIX New Music Ensemble. Lavender, for saxophone quartet and macro cinematography of insects, premiered in 2026; earlier orchestral work has been described in the New York Classical Review as "an almost Elgarian sweep of broad melody and nostalgia."

Ethan holds a B.A. from Bard College, where they studied with Kyle Gann and Matt Sargent, and an M.A. from Rutgers University, where they studied with Robert Aldridge and Scott Ordway. They are a PhD candidate in composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh under Charles Peck, and serve on the Board of Directors of the Charles Ives Society. Alongside composition they have worked as an audio engineer, recording artists including Branford Marsalis, Arturo Sandoval, and members of the LA Philharmonic and MET Orchestra.

Ethan Isaac (b. 1996) is a composer working in just intonation, electroacoustic composition, and multimedia practice that pairs their music with their own original cinematography. Their work has been performed at Le Poisson Rouge and the Andy Warhol Museum, and by ensembles including ~Nois, the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra, and the HELIX New Music Ensemble. The work ranges from chamber settings of Russian literature to multimedia explorations of childhood morality and our relationship with insects to orchestral meditations drawn from the Zohar, integrating microtonal pitch organization, live electronics, and original visual material within a single compositional surface.

Recent work includes Lavender, a multimedia piece for saxophone quartet and macro cinematography of insects, premiered by ~Nois at the Andy Warhol Museum, and In the Shape of a Home, a vocal sextet in just intonation written for Ekmeles and the compositional companion to a paper presented at AMS/SMT. Ethan is currently collaborating with sculptor Laura Jean McLaughlin on a multidisciplinary installation for the Imprints project with the International Sculpture Center, augmenting what was originally a visual piece into a full multidisciplinary work, and will travel to Slovenia later this year for a residency with precept.concept.precept.

Ethan holds a B.A. from Bard College, where they studied with Kyle Gann and Matt Sargent, and an M.A. from Rutgers University, where they studied with Robert Aldridge and Scott Ordway. They are a PhD candidate in composition and theory at the University of Pittsburgh under Charles Peck, teaching undergraduate theory and composition while researching new methods of realizing just intonation music, and serve on the Board of Directors of the Charles Ives Society.

Ethan also performs regularly around Pittsburgh as one half of two duos: .wad, with Danny Fratina — free improvisation and composed noise music for modular synthesizers and Beacon, Fratina's heavily modified electronic trumpet — and Ethereal Semantics, with Sam Bernhardt, given over to long-form, lyrical improvisations for guitar and live electronics. They completed a residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute and have been a fellow at the SPLICE Institute and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute. Alongside composition they have worked as an audio engineer under producers Jamey Lamar and Marlan Barry, recording artists including Branford Marsalis, Arturo Sandoval, Tommy Emmanuel, the Dover Quartet, and members of the LA Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, and MET Orchestra.