John Kosch


website: johnkosch.com
e-mail: johnkosch@johnkosch.com

John Kosch is a composer and arranger currently working in the Kansas City area. His compositions fuse pop melodies and jazz chords with the intricate rhythms, textures, and tuning systems of concert music. He uses this vocabulary to wrestle with issues such as mental illness, existentialism, corruption, and Nihilism in his works. Kosch has won several awards for compositions in contrasting idioms, including: First place in the NAfME Young Composers Competition (SATB choir), a merit award from the Tribeca New Music Young Composer Competition (percussion ensemble), an honorable mention from Austin Classical Guitar, a Student Downbeat Award (jazz orchestra), and a Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award (big band). His works have also been selected for performances at regional and national Society of Composers (SCI) conferences, as well as the Charlotte New Music Festival and the Cortona Sessions for New Music.

If you wish to commission John, please send an e-mail to johnkosch@johnkosch.com . Whether you need an original work or an arrangement, all requests are welcome!

Compositions

Fallen Angel
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Fallen Angel explores the idea that surface beauty does not equate to virtue. Rather, beauty can corrupt, as it does in this piece, spawning something hideous and deviant. This work is loosely inspired by biblical texts and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Outbreak
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Outbreak pits music of disparate styles against each other, taking the listener on a transformative journey. This piece challenges audiences to break away from the mundane and experience sublimity by surrendering to carefully constructed chaos— no matter how far it seems we have wondered from our starting point, there are always familiar themes close by.
Per Aspera
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The state motto of Kansas is “Ad astra per aspera,” which roughly translates, “To the stars through hardship.” Per Aspera combines settings of texts by Kansas-based poets that address the challenges of emotional turmoil and mental illness.