About
Austin Franklin is an internationally recognized composer, sound artist, developer, and researcher. He received a PhD in Experimental Music & Digital Media from Louisiana State University in 2023. His interests include music involving process, slow methodical thematic development, and an attention to texture and form. His work has been described as having “great subtlety and sophistication” (Helena Michelson, The American Prize) and “striking effects of togetherness” and “a sense of an ending” (New York Concert Review). He is currently a researcher at Mälardalens University in Västerås and The Royal College of Music in Stockholm creating technologies for information retrieval, embedded systems, and audiovisual artistic processes.
Central to his use of technology is accessibility, modularity, and reusability through, among others, music information retrieval technologies. He is interested in design patterns for electroacoustic musical systems which can serve and aid a wide range of musicians and artistic goals. As a leader in thought and practice using sonic art technology, he has developed several open source tools for composers and performers. These include a software library called PnP.Maxtools written for Cycling ’74 Max which is demonstrated in his recent paper Building Musical Systems: An Approach Using Music Information Retrieval Tools. Visit the Software page to learn more.
Austin has several pieces for percussion published through C-Alan Publications and has received performances throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia by ensembles such as Hypercube, The Estrella Consort, Four Corners Ensemble, and the Constantinides New Music Ensemble which premiered his String Quartet No. 1 “Lanterns” at Carnegie Hall. Austin is the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, including the Petrichor International Music Competition, The American Prize for Composition, RMN Call for Electroacoustic Works, PARMA Winter Call for Scores, and the ABLAZE Electronic Masters Series Call for Recordings. His music has also been selected for festivals and conferences such as Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), Napoleon Electronic Media Festival (NEMF), Festival Ecos Urbanos, the New Music on the Bayou Festival (NMOB), Splice Institute, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (NYCEMF), the Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (WOCMAT), Alba Music Festival, Society of Composers Incorporated (SCI), and Electric LaTex. His music can be found on most streaming platforms as well as through the Music page.
As a technologist and researcher, he has presented research at the Web Audio Conference (WAC) that explores using Web API’s as the basis for designing digital instruments, and at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference (NIME) that involves simultaneous auditory and vibrotactile stimuli. His work developing novel real-time music information retrieval algorithms has been presented at the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) and at the Australasian Computer Music Conference (ACMC). His most recent research and writing can be found on the Research page.
Press
- Mary Stein, Library Road Show (2023) – “This was a blend of two of my favorite things: music and technology. And I especially enjoyed the serendipitous aspect of this program.”
- Gaming Through Music, The Advocate (2023) – “The Main Library at Goodwood played host to an experimental game called Horde. The game, created by Austin Franklin and Nick Barrett, uses sound to control the movement of the character… The player(s) use musical instruments and follow directions as what notes, music tempo and pitch to control the character, a frog, around the screen avoiding “enemies” and finding “allies” in a 12-minute round.”
- Helena Michelson, The American Prize (2023) – “Rhythmic Mosaics is a highly enjoyable work vividly depicting the composer’s vision. The score is very clear and well edited with helpful program notes and detailed performance notes. The electronic component, so often a challenge to integrate, functions seamlessly here. The two mallet percussion instruments, marimba, and vibraphone are also used with great subtlety to create sophisticated rhythmic patterns. The change at rehearsal letter F, the slowing down of earlier rhythmic patterns creates a blissful moment and is one of the highlights of the work.”
- It really happened: Yes We Cannibal’s 2021 Yearbook (2022) – “…graceful and sonorous with echoing tones, eerie tinkles, and harmonic buzz.“
- Austin Franklin’s Music with Live Electronics (2022) – “Lately, I had the pleasure of premiering his most recent piece, Concentric Circles, for Piano, Cello, Percussion & Live Electronics… This included a variety of specially coded programs within MaxMSP which manipulates data that is taken in through microphones listening to live performers…”
- Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY) presents Constantinides New Music Ensemble in Review (2022) – “…striking effects of togetherness…” and “…a sense of an ending.”
- NPR’s Louisiana Considered, WRKF89.3 (2022) – “On April 8, student composers and members of the Constantinides New Music Ensemble from the LSU School of Music will perform a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. They will be performing works by student composers, as well as works by LSU Music faculty and alumni… Austin Franklin, PhD candidate in Experimental Music & Digital Media at LSU CMDA, tells us more about the upcoming performance.”
- Jacob Ottmer and Micheal Barnes, commissioners of Rhythmic Mosaics (2022) – “…Rhythmic Mosaics really shows what electro-acoustic music can be. Musical, enjoyable, acoustic, electronic, organized, structured, logical.”
- In Review: Austin Franklin’s “Four Idols”, Sybaritic Singer (2021) – “A crucial testament to Franklin’s compositional voice is his ability to unify the diverse approaches on this collection in a way that articulates a sum greater than its parts… For both the initiated and uninitiated listener, Austin Franklin’s Four Idols provides an elegant, artistic statement that demonstrates the expressive and flexible possibilities of electronic music. The music on this album is purposeful and beguiling in the ways it weaves a narrative through line across numerous electro-acoustic environments.”
- Episode 040 – Austin Franklin, Sounds of the World Podcast (2021) – “…his music is ethereal, sublime, serene, and tense…”
- Sound/In-Sight, The Art Studio Inc. (2017) – “Franklin’s piece, “Seventh Wave,” is an atonal piece that follows along with what he was working on for his senior recital, and it was natural for him to carry those ideas over. The idea for the piece came when he was on vacation with family. One night, as he was watching the shoreline, he thought about an old sailor’s myth that waves travel in series of sevens and the seventh is always the strongest.”