Alexander Blank

Composer, Conductor, Engraver

Recent News

Saturday, November 7:

Until the Sun Dies


Until the Sun Dies, for large chorus, was performed as part of the 2015 Midwest Composers Symposium, hosted by Indiana University. The soloists were:
Caroline Jamsa, Soprano
Meghan Folkerts, Mezzo-Soprano
Nic Chuaqui, Tenor
Mitchell Jones, Baritone

Upcoming Events & Performances

Wednesday, January 27th, 2016

Master’s Recital — 8:00 PM Auer Hall, Jacobs School of Music

Program TBA


March, 2016

Premiere of Along the Wabash, a documentary on the people and culture that developed in Indiana's Wabash River Valley. Produced and directed by Susanne Schwibs for PBS-affiliate WTIU, based in Bloomington, Indiana.

Recent Pieces

Until the Sun Dies

A number of years ago, I read Robert Jastrow's Until the Sun Dies, a book examining the evolution of life on Earth in relation to the age of the sun while analyzing the likelihood of whether life (and particularly, Man) would outlive the sun. The book's ultimate message is grim, but the prose with which Jastrow expounds on the probable fate of man is quite beautiful and poetic. When constructing this piece, I first selected a few beautiful phrases from the book and created the text by combining it with references to light in the standard Requiem text, so as to create a dramatic textual dissonance between the eventual reality of celestial cataclysm and the warmth of religious promise. Additionally, there are sporadic, structural references to the C major "Licht" in Haydn's Creation, which goes through a transformation towards clusters over the course of the piece, while the religious chorus music becomes more and more dramatic.