Chris Krycho Music
@music.chriskrycho.com
45 followers 13 following 220 posts
A working composer in the contemporary classical and neo-romantic idioms. https://chriskrycho.music
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music.chriskrycho.com
The Desert—a Lenten musical meditation I wrote in 2024—ended up on somebody’s much-subscribed-to playlist a couple days ago… and promptly got ~100× as many plays as it had since I released it. And I think it was a mistake! 😂 But a happy one, which I will take.

music.chriskrycho.com/works/desert...
The Desert | Chris Krycho – Composer
A minimalist/ambient work for solo piano, consisting of just 40 keystrokes. A Lenten meditation, inspired by Christ’s 40 days and nights in the desert.
music.chriskrycho.com
music.chriskrycho.com
🎼🎧 Working through Camille Pepín’s oeuvre after being introduced to her work at the Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s season-opening concert this past weekend, and it is just lovely.

Expect to hear more on the subject (no pun intended!) in my end-of-month newsletter!

#orchestra #music
music.chriskrycho.com
Delighted to be enjoying opening night for the Colorado Springs Philharmonic’s 99th season. Camille Pepín, Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky, led by new music director Chloe Dufresne. This is: good!
Picture of the interior of the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs with an orchestra in stage warming up before the concert begins; the words “Opening night!” in all caps are laid over the image in black text with a white background.
music.chriskrycho.com
One thing I didn’t see others comment on in the replies yet: ease of using it outside Xcode. It’s only been the past few years that it became much more straightforward and easy to use from other editors with the build being orchestrated via CLI. They were late to a modern packaging ecosystem, too.
music.chriskrycho.com
My wife and I have both done a bunch of different video stuff in the past year or two, and this may just be the thing that pushes me into getting a NAS setup. Seriously evaluating snagging a Ubiquiti UNAS 2 or 4 (thanks to @atp.fm for the info!) and speccing it out with a *lot* of storage. 🤔
music.chriskrycho.com
This month’s recommendation was for Michael Torke’s outstanding album Sky—concertos for violin, bassoon, oboe, and clarinet—, which you can listen on streaming services of course, but which you should instead purchase directly from Torke, here: www.michaeltorke.com/recordings/s...
sky — MICHAEL TORKE
Sky 2020 Pulitzer Finalist Grammy Nomination for Tessa Lark To buy piano reduction and part, or study score: click here Sky, concerto for violin [24:03] (click here to listen) 1 I....
www.michaeltorke.com
music.chriskrycho.com
Alternatively, always, you can read the essay along with recommendations of other #composers’ work and some updates on my in-progress #symphony, in the newsletter itself: newsletter.music.chriskrycho.com/archive/sept...
🎼 September 2025: Two Strange Chasms
On finding not only an audience but performers for our works.
newsletter.music.chriskrycho.com
music.chriskrycho.com
I wrote in my end-of-September newsletter this week about the “two chasms” that artists like playwrights and composers have to cross—one chasm shared by all artists, and one… not.
Reposted by Chris Krycho Music
chriskrycho.com
@craigmod.com is walking again, and you can read along. Pop-up newsletter: you get daily missives for the two weeks he’s doing this, and then the whole list is deleted. One of my favorite things on the web! craigmod.com/ridgeline/216/
Between Two Mountains — A New Pop-up Newsletter
Walking 200 km of the Kiso Valley
craigmod.com
music.chriskrycho.com
My monthly #music missive! Thinking about the chasms between finishing a work and its finding an audience; and also—for some kinds of work—finding others who love it enough to bring it into the world with you by performing it. newsletter.music.chriskrycho.com/archive/sept...
🎼 September 2025: Two Strange Chasms
On finding not only an audience but performers for our works.
newsletter.music.chriskrycho.com
music.chriskrycho.com
Discovered while prepping this month’s newsletter (courtesy of a good reminder by @scarradini.bsky.social of this particular work): John Luther Adams is on Bandcamp. YESSSSS. Love to see “significant” musicians on independent distribution channels. johnlutheradams.bandcamp.com/album/become...
Become Ocean, by Seattle Symphony
1 track album
johnlutheradams.bandcamp.com
music.chriskrycho.com
Back from a travel week, back at composing. Which today mostly means ripping things out. Remember when I said I had found my way to the start of the conclusion of Mvt. III? 😂 Well. About that.

I was iffy on it even before the trip but now? RIP IT OUT, do something different.

Onward.
Reposted by Chris Krycho Music
zoekeating.com
Happy 90th birthday Arvo Pärt!
music.chriskrycho.com
Spoilers: tonic too soon and too strongly. 😂 Need to find a different way to get there and to hit it appropriately for the conclusion here. Don’t conclude the first time I get back to the tonic.
music.chriskrycho.com
Started the conclusion of Mvt. III in the #symphony this morning. I’ve been building my way toward it for the past couple of weeks (in my little 20–30-minute stretches) and today: boom, there’s the tonic we’ve been dancing toward and then backing away from for a couple minutes worth of #music. 🎼
Reposted by Chris Krycho Music
mattgreenrocks.bsky.social
Really good music has layers to it that you continue to discover through repeated, attentive listenings
music.chriskrycho.com
1. I really like a lot of Messiaen’s work.
2. It is *not* “working music”. I think that’s largely a compliment! It demands attention and engagement. It refuses to be background material.

There’s something interesting there about “working music” in general.
music.chriskrycho.com
Started the conclusion of Mvt. III in the #symphony this morning. I’ve been building my way toward it for the past couple of weeks (in my little 20–30-minute stretches) and today: boom, there’s the tonic we’ve been dancing toward and then backing away from for a couple minutes worth of #music. 🎼
music.chriskrycho.com
Reminded myself this morning—because I had to—that it doesn’t matter how stuck you feel when you stare at the page. “Composer’s block”, like “writer’s block”, just means it’s time to start. Or take a walk and *then* start. But start. Momentum begets momentum, and stagnation, stagnation. Do the work!
Reposted by Chris Krycho Music
quellekelsey.bsky.social
My History colleagues are looking for a Europeanist who can also teach in a non-Western area. I'd personally be enthusiastic about another French speaker joining the college. We have a lovely Francophone community of faculty and students, and there are French lunches on campus twice a month!
quellekelsey.bsky.social
Job Announcement: Professor Modern European History (1750-Present), open rank, beginning in Fall 2026 at Grove City College, a small Christian liberal arts college an hour north of Pittsburgh. Preference for someone who can also teach courses in a non-Western field. www.gcc.edu/Utility/Port...
music.chriskrycho.com
As was foretold—the video version of my monthly #music newsletter is now live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKiQ...

Now with tiny bits of orchestra music that I wrote for the intro and outro! And I do mean *tiny*. But it was a fun little thing to do with my free time on Labor Day today.
Teachers – On the Craft for August 2025
YouTube video by Chris Krycho
www.youtube.com
Reposted by Chris Krycho Music
chriskrycho.com
Video takes such a shocking amount of time to do well. The ~10-minute video versions of the essays I write for my music newsletter every month are the longest part of the project—it’s not even close. Some of that is my lack of practice, but some of it is just how many kinds of work it entails!
music.chriskrycho.com
The extra bits this month are fun:

• In memory of the too-soon-departed Ezio Bosso
• @awintory.bsky.social and @gordyhaab.bsky.social’s great discussion about the latter’s having written more Star Wars music than John Williams (!)
• @macwright.com’s Prepper-style music hoarding
• Symphony stats!