Holly Mead - Composer, Pianist

In September, I went on tour with the amazing and talented ONIKHO! We performed in NYC, London, and Berlin. Here is a photographic/videographic retrospective of some of the highlights. 

We kicked things off at Nicky's Unisex in NYC:

Soundcheck…

A musical send-off will take place at UMA Gallery in Oakland this Thursday, May 5th, 2022, 7:30pm. This hour-long program of original solo piano will be my last performance as a Bay Area resident. Thank you for everything. I…

I will be taking a brief leave of absence from my current residency at the Dorland Artist Colony in Temecula, CA, in order to attend Awesöme Orchestra Collective's EOY concert and fundraiser on Sunday, December 12th at the Freight and…

With only two months left on sabbatical before I return home, the time has come to assimilate my newly minted skills and check a few things off of my composerly to-do list. Here is my capstone orchestration project, Syrinx Symphony…

I have enjoyed sweating my way through "Part One" of Paul Hindemith's bootcamp-esque Elementary Training For Musicians. I was initially dismayed by Hindemith's cosmically grumpy introduction which is rife with abrasive/exclusionary language, but I'm glad I shrugged off his…

I had the privilege and pleasure of collaborating with ONIKHO to create an orchestral arrangement of her new song "Love Bold" for Awesöme Orchestra! You can see/hear it (and two other beautiful new works) in this documentary produced by…

Here are exercises 1, 2, 4, and 5 at the end of Chapter Six of Twentieth Century Harmony, pg. 158-159!

Here are exercises 2, 3, 6, and 7 at the end of Chapter Five of Twentieth Century Harmony, pg. 133-134!

Here are exercises 1-7, 9, and 11 at the end of Chapter Five of Twentieth Century Harmony, pg. 119-120!

Here is a combo of Wednesday and Thursday's experiments:

Today, I combined a Phrygian-Major tetrachord with a Lydian-Major tetrachord to create a modified v.2 of yesterday's tune. Tomorrow, I'd like to try combining/lengthening yesterday and today's snippets to create a more substantial piece.

I've been puttering my way through Ron Gorow's Hearing & Writing Music: Professional Training for Today's Musician for quite some time, and I was able to finish it this week. There are already plenty of descriptions/reviews of Gorow's book floating…