Premieres at REDCAT, Los Angeles on June 26-27, 2026.
Completed at the Kayenta Arts Centre.
Archives: Pieces
Colours
In the 20-minute video work Colours, Daniel Corral explores color through sound, language, and light. The film samples brief moments from popular songs that name a color, pairing each excerpt with the written word as it shifts hue onscreen. Through repetition, the work produces subtle visual and auditory hallucinations that draw attention to each color’s formal qualities: rhythm, tone, and the word itself. The result is a relationship to color that is both internal—the sensations shaped by individual perception—and shared as widely recognizable cultural references.
Available from Music for Your Inbox from January 1, 2026 to February 28, 2026, paired with mail art from Kate Gorman!
Colours: Green & Red
Written for Splinter Reeds and part of a larger project. The live ensemble plays along with fixed media. The audio for each piece is a collage compiled from different recordings of the same song—focusing on moments where the lyrics have colors in them. Colours’ visual use of language Is influenced by artists like Ed Ruscha, Glen Ligon, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer. The music embraces the concept of palimpsest on many levels. The audio collages play with memory and earworms in a minimalist theme and variations, akin to Steve Reich’s work involving pre-recorded audio (Different Trains, It’s Gonna Rain, etc.). The live musicians and singers layer meaning on top of this collaged audio minimalism, focusing the process-driven dispersion of meaning into a coherent dramatic arc. There is also a large influence of experimental film on Colours. In particular, Philip Greenaway’s 70s films Vertical Features Remake and Windows—which adhere to and humorously critique the tenets of structural film and conceptual art.
Ace of Cups
Originally composed and premiered with four 18-note Sankyo musical movements playing Amazing Grace in the key of G major.
Sextet #7
Sextet #7 in Ojai
Photos from Sound+Walk, presented by the Ojai Music Festival and Black Barn Sessions
Sextet #7 is a generative sound installation in 6 boxes. Each box improvises its own part, using a palette of field recordings, electronic sounds, and audio samples. The result is a spatialized imaginary soundscape that is constantly reinventing itself. Sextet #7 is an evolution of my past work with music boxes.
Sextet #7 audio
Every time Sextet #7 runs, it is different. This is just of one run of the piece.
Two of Pentacles
Two of Pentacles is a solo performance for Lou Harrison National Resonator guitar and 7 of my 20 Eikosany chimes. I play the JI guitar, and the chimes will be played through robotic triggers. The 7 notes are the pitches that overlap between the Lou Harrison’s guitar tuning at the Eikosany chimes I built last year. For this juggling of systems and for this period in my own career and life, Two of Pentacles is a very appropriate symbol.
Two of Pentacles was created with support from a City of Los Angeles Master Artist Project Grant.
Norri
Norri images
by DaEun Jung, with Melody Shim
A dance quartet combining traditional Korean dance with chance operations and contemporary dance.
The music combines Lou Harrison’s National Resophonic Guitar with electronics and the powerful pansori voice of Melody Shim.
2023 Press for Norri
LA Dance Chronicle: “…mesmerizing… wonderful…”
Stage and Cinema: “… a mind fuck.”
Candoro
As part of the development process for a collaboration with Alexander Gedeon and DaEun Jung, I made a 13 minute video/sound piece for Music for Your Inbox called Candoro.
In this video, the soundscape around the Candoro Marble Company in Knoxville, TN is treated with JI magical realism, echoing the surreal navigations of our three bodies around the physical space of the building’s Beaux-Arts architecture.
The video was shot during our time at the Loghaven Artist Residency last September.
Performers:
Daniel Corral, Alexander Gedeon, and DaEun JungFour of Wands
Four of Wands album
Premiered by myself, Erin Barnes, Cory Beers, and Andrew Lessman on December 17, 2022 at Automata LA.
Four of Wands began as a sketch for a concept I’m developing for my upcoming COLA IMAP performance in June, 2023. The piece creates a contemplative space through a series of gradually changing chords on 20 just-intonation chimes. These chords manifest through shifting polyrhythms connected to the frequency of each chime. I originally titled it 4 for 20, but Four of Wands felt much more in line with what I was aiming for at the time.
This piece continues my 8 years of making just-tuned chimes, as well as my gradual descent into the wooly world of Erv Wilson microtonality. The chimes are tuned to a 1•3•5•7•9•11 Eikosany, and each musician plays 5 of them.
2025 press for Four of Wands
MetalJazz: “You may discover that this music puts you literally in tune with nature because of the simple numerical principles, which, when the numbers are combined, produce rich harmonies. When looked at that way, being a cipher no longer feels empty. A number can be manipulated, but its essence cannot be broken — it will continue even when it seems to be erased or alone. Faraway numbers are always resonating with it.
Eikosany Study
Eikosany Study at UCSD’s Experimental Theater
Performed by Palimpsest Ensemble (cond. Steven Schick) on April 20, 2022
A harmony study of a 1-3-5-7-9-11 Eikosany composed for the Palimpsest Ensemble.
Incomplete Open Hexany
Written for the Now Hear Ensemble, Incomplete Open Hexany is a harmony study of a 6-note JI scale.
It was premiered on April 6, 2022 at the Riverside Art Museum
Alma
Sound Design for a Center Theater Group Production
Directed by Juliette Carillo
Written by Benjamin Benne
Starring Cheryl Umaña and Sabrina Fest
5 for 40
As part of the development process for a collaboration with Alexander Gedeon and DaEun Jung, I made a 13 minute video/sound piece for Music for Your Inbox called Candoro.
In this video, the soundscape around the Candoro Marble Company in Knoxville, TN is treated with JI magical realism, echoing the surreal navigations of our three bodies around the physical space of the building’s Beaux-Arts architecture.
The video was shot during our time at the Loghaven Artist Residency last September.
Performers:
Daniel Corral, Alexander Gedeon, and DaEun JungMount San Antonio 1944
Mount San Antonio 1944
Video premiere by PARTCH Ensemble
Commissioned by PARTCH Ensemble and premiered in 2021.
The text for this piece was found in the Sierra Club’s summit register archive at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. A summit register is a log book sometimes found at the tops of mountain trails, and this text came from a summit register on Mt. San Antonio in 1944. Mount San Antonio (AKA Mt. Baldy) is the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, originally called Joat by the Tongva people and called “San Antonio Peak” in the Sierra Club archives. Dale F. Stewart, who wrote this entry, reveals that he was at Caltech in 1944. At the time, Caltech was very involved in the USA’s war efforts in both Europe and the Pacific. US troops landed at Normandy only three weeks before Stewart’s writing, and the US military detonated atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki just over one year later (several key Manhattan Project personnel were from Caltech). This military affiliation helps explain Stewart’s quick identification of the Lockheed P38. Meanwhile, JPL co-founder Jack Parsons would leave his post there by the end of the year – due in part to his deep devotion to occultist (and mountaineer) Aleister Crowley and budding friendship with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. All of this is to say that there was probably a lot on Dale F. Stewart’s mind in June, 1944 as he surveyed the vistas from Mount San Antonio.
Neuston
Neuston played by Mark Dresser’s UCSD Bass Quartet
Recorded at Conrad Prebys Music Center
Split screen video is Myra Hinrichs playing Hodad at Trestles BeachLink to video on YouTube site
Neuston was written for Mark Dresser’s UCSD bass quartet, who premiered it on April 9. It is mean to be played simultaneously with Hodad.
Hodad
Online video premiere in March 2021 via Music for your Inbox!
Written for violinist Myra Hinrichs.
Hodad is meant to be played at a beach. The player watches ocean waves as the roll toward the shore, shaping the music to follow the natural rhythms of the sea on that day at that place.
The intonation extends my exploration of stellate hexanies tuned to the Schumann frequency 7.83 Hz.
2021 Press for Hodad
Sequenza 21: “Hodad is a metaphor for the relative spheres of influence – the violin in the concert hall and the surf outdoors. One is full of quiet introspection, the other has unlimited energy, but in this piece both can be examined by the listener in the same context.”
Neuston played by Mark Dresser’s UCSD Bass Quartet
Recorded at Conrad Prebys Music Center
Split screen video is Myra Hinrichs playing Hodad at Trestles BeachLink to video on YouTube site
Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40
What would happen if the conventional flow of Korean dance is disrupted Prompted by this question, dancer-choreographer DaEun Jung has built a compositional system inspired by Merce Cunningham’s “chance operation” and the Korean alphabet, Hangul. Assigning the segmented moves of classical Korean dance to each morpho-syllabic block of the alphabet, Byoul Part 1: 246 at 40—consisting of 246 syllables, moves, and beats at 40 bpm—finds Jung, pansori singer Melody Shim, and sound composer Daniel Corral exploring concurrences of rigor upon arbitrary, spontaneity upon rules, flow upon interruption, dependency upon idiosyncrasy, and the conditional upon the absolute.
Choreographed and Performed by DaEun Jung
Vocals: Melody H. Sim (Shim)
Composer/Sound Design/Video Design: Daniel Corral
Costume Design: Alice Park
Scenic Concept: Haeshin Park
Director of Photography: Chantal Cherry
Video Editor: Scarlett Kim
Associate Video Editor: Anthony Storniolo
Sound Recording: Sung Ryeol Kim
Special thanks to Alexander Gedeon, Tom Byun, and Rosanna Gamson for your generous support, time, and spaceConcerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage
A collaboration with performer/director Alexander Gedeon, Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage combines live music and theatrical performance to reframe the cultural significance of the “worst album in rock and roll history.”
“Having Fun with Elvis on Stage” is a 1973 album collaged entirely from Elvis speaking on stage between songs at live concerts – no music. AllMusic’s Mark Deming declared “hearing it is like witnessing a car wreck, leaving onlookers too horrified and too baffled to turn away.” Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage reimagines this vilified recording as the libretto for a sort of ghost opera, combining pop art nostalgia with new technology and classical instruments to create a memetic hologram of the endless purgatory of celebrity afterlife.
My live musical score is performed along with the original LP as if they were the pit orchestra for opera or musical theater – sometimes harmonizing with the words, painting emotions in the spaces between, or reacting theatrically. Meanwhile, Gedeon’s “Elvis” persona becomes a vehicle to explore all things banal and absurd in pop idolatry, as well as the performative aspects of ‘stage presence.’
2020 press for Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage
Sequenza 21: “…carried off with exemplary production values and extraordinary performances, making the case that new music concerts can be experienced online at a high level.”
LA Times Cultural Pick: “Theater artist Alexander Gedeon and composer Daniel Corral deconstruct the myth of pop stardom in this musical fable with live accompaniment by the Now Hear Ensemble.”
LA Weekly: Arts Calendar Highlight
Canon in A Minor
I was asked by pianist Lorenzo Marasso to write a short piano piece in response to Bach’s Invention #13 in Am. I composed a strict canon at the octave, with the two voices one 16th note apart from each other.
Lorenzo premiered Canon in A Minor along with pieces by 14 other composers on July 26, 2020, live-streaming on YouTube and Facebook.
15 Pendulums
This is a Unity-based video piece, inspired by Reich’s Pendulum Music, but with a microtonal tuning based on a 1-3-5-7 combination-product set. The fundamental of this tuning is an upper 2/1 partial of the Schumann resonance 7.83 Hz. This Schumann resonance is basically the resonant frequency of the Earth’s electromagnetic field.
Pastoral
Pastoral works to revise the stories I grew up with: American tropes of manifest destiny, untroubled and unlimited resources, and selective invisibilities. I am making this dance to replace those stories, with new and necessary ones. Monuments decay, inhabitable land shrinks, walls become flesh, and we consider what it means to run (away). The spatial frame of the dance shifts from iconic American landscapes to unencumbered, unbounded spaces in which dancers are unmoored and adrift. Mortal time is brief. There is only time to tell new stories and cherish fleeting moments. – VIC
Choreographic Direction by Victoria Marks
Visuals by Isla Hansen
Lighting by Arsenio Apillanes
Sound by Daniel Corral
Choreographic Assistance by Sarah Jacobs
Featuring: Dezaré Foster, DaEun Jung, Aaron Mason, Alexx Shilling, Willy Souly, Tom Tsai2020 press for Pastoral by Victoria Marks
LA Dance Chronicle: “Pastoral takes the early 20th century concept of Americana worship and shatters it — rightfully so. Though things have never fully been fair, the once tangible idea of ‘making it’ has become almost entirely fantastical, as we struggle to find out place in this land.”
Stellate Hexany Earth Chimes
Stellate Hexany Earth Chimes are 14 microtonal steel chimes, tuned in a 1-3-5-7 Stellate Hexany. They are installed at the Djerassi estate in Woodside, CA, USA and hung in a straight line for visitors to play with a stick.
The fundamental frequency is an upper 2/1 (octave) partial of the Schumann resonance 7.83 Hz. This Schumann resonance is basically the resonant frequency of the Earth’s electromagnetic field, and this resonant frequency is activated (or at least implied) when its upper partials are played on these chimes.
Stellate Hexany Boxes
Stellate Hexany Boxes prototypes #1–2
Inside of several cigar boxes, there are animated optical illusions which represent 3D tuning lattices. These objects float in space and play music, corresponding to the notes of a 1-3-5-7 “Stellate Hexany,” envisioned by Erv Wilson.
Stellate Hexany Box #1 (IG clip)
Summits
Summits is a song cycle using texts I have collected over the last decade while hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains. Each song is based on entries I have documented in various summit registers (notebooks often found at the top of mountain trails). These personal chronicles from regional pinnacles portray the wisdom, humility, and humor that can only be found on a mountain peak.
Summits is written for voice, string quartet, and guitar/accordion, and I am happy to be joined by singer Joanna Wallfisch and the Koan Quartet in bringing it to life.
Summits premiered at the Soundwaves Concert Series on March 20, 2019 in celebration of their 50th event!
Count In
Count In is a meditation on the role of individual voices in an imminent post-human environment, based around a recording of Poly-Styrene (from the 70s punk band X-Ray Spex) defiantly shouting the numbers “1-2-3-4.”
Count In combines phasing techniques and just intonation (with a tuning system inspired by La Monte Young’s Well Tuned Piano) and the result is a mixture of Steve Reich, X-Ray Spex, James Tenney, and Sesame Street Pinball Number Counts. The layered iterations of Styrene’s voice are reinforced by the visual presence of corresponding numbers, which slowly change color akin to a James Turrell Skyspace.
Counting Presence
Published in Soap Ear Journal Issue 10
The following is a reflection on the 2019 piece Count In by composer Daniel Corral. In this essay Corral lays out his creative process alongside formal elements of the piece, while considering experiences of stability, change, and presence.
Polytope
Polytope album
Released Sept. 28, 2018 on Orenda Records
Polytope is a multimedia microtonal performance for MIDI quartet. Performed entirely in darkness, it’s a mesmerizing dance of silhouettes of fingers over colorful glowing MIDI buttons, captured on live feed video and projected large and bright as a moving, visual score.
Polytope is rhythmically charged in the vein of musical minimalists such as Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, or Arnold Dreyblatt, but harmonically inspired by the microtonal explorations of James Tenney, Erv Wilson, or Harry Partch. The multimedia style of presentation is somewhere between a string quartet, Kraftwerk, James Turrell, and an Indonesian dhalang (master shadow puppeteer).
Onstage, four MIDI controllers sit on a small square table. A single video camera captures the view from above. The controllers are not traditional keyboards; they are glowing grids of 8×8 buttons, rotated 45° to create tonality diamonds. One musician stands before each controller. In the dark, the overhead camera captures the colorful, changing patterns of grid lights and the fast-moving silhouettes of the musician hands. The live feed video is projected in the space, creating a larger than life, colorful multimedia experience inspired by Light and Space art that also acts as an evolving, visual score.
2018 press for Polytope
Riting: “Polytope embodies ‘the gold standard’ of ambient music — it can hover in the background and cast a subtle vibe, but will also stand up to closer inspection: delicately layered overtones cascade and recede, forming a spellbinding latticework. In moments, it’s not unlike water drops on a windshield, dripping and streaking reflected light with each movement of the wiper.”
Sequenza 21: “Polytope is an extraordinary piece of musical and visual art… that is both accessible and compelling.”
Vital Weekly: “Whatever it is, it sounds simply wonderful… worth your every while.”
The Stranger: “After five minutes of this silvery, undulant tintinnabulation, I was ready to evaporate into another more sparkly and stimulating dimension than the one in which we currently suffer. This piece sounds like gamelan from Pluto—or maybe ’70s Philip Glass as interpreted by Harry Partch on his Cloud-Chamber Bowls.”
New Classic LA (Interview): “Daniel Corral’s latest work, Polytope, premieres at Automata as part of this year’s MicroFest, who have named their season after it. We were lucky that Daniel had a minute to answer some questions about this piece…”
24700: “Composer, CalArts faculty and alumnus Daniel Corral (Music MFA 07) presents the live debut of his latest release Polytope to Automata in Los Angeles on Sunday (March 18). The concert is the featured performance of this year’s MicroFest 2018.”
SF Gate: “A mesmerizing visual and musical spectacle”
MetalJazz: “Musicians who know the turf”
The Rest is Noise: Miscellany
Polytope
Published in Xenharmonikon on January 4, 2022
This article describes the compositional and performance practices involved in my 2018 piece Polytope. This microtonal multimedia piece is performed by 4 musicians playing Launchpad Pros in total darkness, with live feed video and electronic 4-channel sound.
(antiquated) Augmented Reality
Created by Christine Marie.
Music by Daniel Corral, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and Laaraji.
Features excerpt from my pieces Polytope, Diamond Pulses, and One Line
2019 press for (antiquated) Augmented Reality by Christine Marie
Variety: “The vivid choreography and score leave a lasting impression within one’s psyche…”
NBC: Sundance Film Festival ASCAP 21st Anniversary Lineup
Cool Hunting: “Marie’s work reminds all visitors of the power in exploring all manners of reality modification.”
Circle Limit III
Circle Limit III album
Released July 2, 2021 on MicroFest Records
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Electric 8 and premiered at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of Noon to Midnight 2017.
2017 press for Circle Limit III
Mark Swed, LA Times: ” … a stunning wall of sound as aural complement to Gehry’s steel.”
Sequenza 21: “…Circle Limit III, by Daniel Corral, gracefully flowed outward in a warm ambient wash. The piece was never static… with the sound rising, falling and slowly shimmering in the bright afternoon sunshine. The harmonies were lush and comforting and worked to subvert the frenetic sounds of traffic out in the street. Circle Limit III was perfectly chosen for the sidewalk and fully captured the imagination of the crowd – listening and looking down Grand Avenue became a strangely calming and unexpectedly peaceful experience.”
KPFK: Concert premiere promo
Circle Limit III @ Walt Disney Concert Hall
Refractions
Refractions album
Released May 5, 2017 on Populist Records
Refractions expands on my ten years of exploring the sonic and sculptural possibilities of music boxes. Composed for string quartet, electric guitar, and electronically processed music box, Refractions combines ethereal ambient electronics with contemplative acoustic timbres. Featuring performances from prog rock/metal guitarist Jeremy Kerner, the Isaura String Quartet, and Daniel Corral on music box and laptop, the music is a spacious continuum of composed structures, improvisation, and overlapping textures.
2017 press for Refractions
Christian Carey: “this slowly evolving piece of music is spellbinding in its execution. Rather than foregrounding the incremental shifts of material, the listener is encouraged to bask in a wash of sounds, varied and lovely timbres that are deployed with enough independence to seem to have minds of their own.”
Sequenza 21: “The cool ambient tranquility of Refractions is a much needed antidote to the raucous confusion that infests our daily lives; this music works to elegantly recharge us in a moment of restorative calm.”
National Sawdust Log Journal: “A sublime study in anxious stasis and fleeting repose for string quartet, electric guitar, music box, and digital treatments…”
Textura: “The music blossoms in the most peaceful of manners… the piece… presents an ever-mutating weave of softly glimmering electronics and fluttering acoustic timbres, and as it advances the impression forms of a spacious, ambient-styled composition that’s rooted in both pre-formed structures and improvisation.”
MetalJazz: “Open-aired, shivery…”
Avant Music News: Pick of the week
The Rest is Noise: Nightafternight playlist of “New and recent releases of interest”
24700: “Refractions is a 45-minute electro-acoustic chamber piece that expands on Corral’s 10 years of exploring the sonic and sculptural possibilities of music boxes”
Talk Classical: “Experimental yet attractive new music”
Chicago Reader: Today’s Playlist
Best of 2017 Lists: Bandcamp Daily, Avant Music News (Honorable Mention)National Sawdust, a fool in the forest, Asociacion Intonarumori, Steve Hoffman
One Line
One Line was composed with a scale described in Lou Harrison’s Music Primer, and continues my work featuring multimedia representations of microtonal systems. Many of my similar pieces use complex tuning structures, but One Line is instead quite streamlined, restricted to only 8 notes.
One Line
Livestream Launchpad performance, 4/26/21
A livestream performance of Comma, One Line, and Diamond Pulses
Comma
Comma is a 17-minute solo multimedia performance that combines streamlined rhythms and harmonies with colorful live feed light projections to generate an abstract narrative that is playful and linear, but also steeped in the additive processes of musical minimalism and alternate tuning systems.
Comma premiered August 4-6, 2016 at REDCAT’s New Original Works Festival 2016, featuring 30 ft. projections and 4.1 surround sound.
2016 press for Comma
New Classic LA: “Comma’s multiple paths of engagement and balanced blend of cooperative elements worked to hold audience attention consistently, slowing time against a steady stream of activity. Enthusiasm for the concluded piece reverberated palpably, as a sense of music’s abiding power to enchant and challenge was affirmed once again.”
24700: “The compelling score is inspired by the additive process of minimalist music as grids of light turn on in response to the musician’s movements. “
Los Angeles Downtown News: “A minimalist musical composition using colorful, illuminated buttons on a soundboard. The dark silhouettes of his hands against the backdrop of the light show provide the visual component.”
Livestream Launchpad performance, 4/26/21
A livestream performance of Comma, One Line, and Diamond Pulses
Space-Time
Space-Time, live at Automata
Premiere on May 7, 2016 by Accordant Commons
Based on text from Christine Wertheim’s book +|’me’S-pace, Space-Time uses a tuning system derived from La Monte Young’s Well-Tuned Piano.
It was commissioned by Accordant Commons and premiered at Automata, Los Angeles on May 7, 2016 as part of MicroFest.
2016 press for Space-Time
New Classic LA: “The mood set for meditation and rhythmic swaying and shifting, the singers clapped and recited and sang and slurred and whooped. The words philosophize about reading and comprehending, and shift tiny elements to change entire meanings, … atomizing the language and investigating the relationships of its components… The result reframes consonance and dissonance, making the audience rethink on the fly what they think is pleasant and what clashes. What is usually instinctive to our ears here required conscious thought, fitting the space journey of +|’me’S-pace. The beat was constant but the meter shifts, making the steady time feel like it was swaying in the wind. Between the sonority and the flux of time, it is all the listener can do to hang on and enjoy the ride. “
Diamond Pulses
Diamond Pulses album
Released Sept. 12, 2015 on Orenda Records
Diamond Pulses is a 32-minute musical experience combining just-tuned harmonies, driving minimalist rhythms, noisy ambiance, and electronic timbres.
2015 press for Diamond Pulses
Downtown Music Gallery: “Is this some sort of Kraftwerk-like nirvana? As the tempo speeds up, so does the the inner pulse and ours as well. The adrenalin is pumping and we have to hold on. The nervous energy actually feels good, invigorating. If this were slowed down, an interesting melody would appear, but that is besides the point of what is really going on. An exhilarating motorcycle ride through a cavern of endless mirrors. A good change of pace for yours truly. “
MetalJazz: “Corral’s new Orenda Records album, ‘Diamond Pulses,’ shines with surging dynamics and subliminal microtonalisms that make for a fresh and involving experience; live visuals, too.”
Artificialist: “It’s a nod to minimalism, I guess, but it has less affiliation with the east coast music movement than with the west coast art movement. Think of the Light and Space artists, with their hard edges and industrial materials and loud colors. All references aside, it’s a thing of beauty, a big and bright and fun object that, like all good pop, covers the tracks of its own making so you can’t think about it. You can only feel it.”
Living Out Loud LA: “When I first listened to Diamond Pulses, it took me on a musical journey that I’ve never experienced before. Corral’s unique combination of musical influences results in a calming sound that is truly a delight to listen to. Corral is a great composer, and his expression through music transcends into something so unique that no artist can match. By any means, you need to listen to his album because it’s phenomenal.”
New Classic LA: “Listen at home, with dedicated ears, to this strangely rigid dance meditation, a fervent solipsism with a disturbingly wild, encroaching reality. “
Mouser: “‘Diamond Pulses’, in its impossible myriad of creation, is quietly drawing a key to unlock the secrets of the universe.”
David Segal: “RIYL Rod Poole’s The Death Adder and Seth Josel’s Go Guitars.”
Alaska Dispatch News: “Daniel Corral, formerly of Eagle River and now working in Los Angeles, will release his debut solo album, “Diamond Pulses” (Orenda Records) with shows at 8 and 10 p.m. on September 12 at Automata, an L.A. alternative arts venue.”
24700: “Diamond Pulses is a 32-minute soundscape that combines classical minimalist influences, Balinese rhythm undercurrents and modern production aesthetics. Corral counts Terry Riley, Dawn of Midi, Harry Partch and late faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts James Tenney as key influences on the album.”
Livestream Launchpad performance, 4/26/21
A livestream performance of Comma, One Line, and Diamond Pulses
Diamond Pulses live on Dublab
Live performance of Diamond Pulses on Dublab’s Elevations Through Sound with Ale Cohen!
Progress
Progress live at MorYork, November 21, 2014
Commissioned by Story Water and premiered on November 21, 2014 at MorYork.
Sextets # 1-5
Sextets #1-5 are interactive wall-hanging sound pieces that combine micropolyphonic structures and post-industrial materials. Viewers/listeners are allowed to turn any/all of the knobs on the Sextets in order to create their own unique aleatoric experience.
Expanding on forms explored in prior music box-based projects like Requiem for György Ligeti, the five Sextets were created at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts in October 2014.
Sextets #1-5
Sextet #1 Sextet #3 Sextet #2 Sextet #5 Sextet #4
Sextet for Similar Sounds
During performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audienceDuring performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audience
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
On the left side of the video, there are six black boxes in a vertical line, each with a number 1-6. The musicians should each be assigned a number 1-6, and every player should watch the corresponding box with his/her number in it.
Each of the six musicians should have 3 different sounds to play, represented in the video score by a red diamond, a green triangle, and a blue circle. The colored shapes will move horizontally across the screen from right to left. When a shape is centered in a player’s box, that musician should play the corresponding sound.During performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audienceDuring performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audience
SELECTING SOUNDS
The exact instrumentation is open, as long as all of the sounds corresponding to each of the three shapes can be identical or similar in some way.
Some examples of possible sounds:
1. Squares = arco ord; Triangles = pizz; Circles = col legno batutto
2. Squares = woodblocks; Triangles = crotales; Circles = samba whistles
3. Squares = E; Triangles = B; Circles = F#If the sounds in each shape group are similar but not identical, then they should be arranged from low to high, with part #6 playing the lowest sound and part #1 playing the highest.
SPATIALIZATION
The musicians should be as spread out as space allows. Ideally, they would be arranged in a large circle, or a hexagram as it may be. If that is impossible, then they can be spread out in a line, with player #1 on stage right and player #6 on stage left.
Collapse
Collapse album
Commissioned by REDCAT and premiered on March 27, 2014, COLLAPSE is a post-ecological Requiem – a unique performance with interactive visuals about the environmental catastrophes caused by humans, composed by Daniel Corral. Performed by Timur and the Dime Museum and produced by Beth Morrison Projects, COLLAPSE is envisioned as a sardonically theatrical mass service, where different stories are refracted through the hauntingly eclectic sound of the band and the post-punk voice of TIMUR. Re-imagining the traditional Requiem form into a band-driven song cycle for the 21st century, COLLAPSE will also feature live-mixed projections by the award-winning video artist Jesse Gilbert (World Technology Network fellow). Costumes of the progressive LA fashion designer Victor Wilde of the Bohemian Society (Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2014), will further create a raucous portrait of the human-made impact on the planet.
2015 press for Collapse
Vanity Fair: Can the Mississippi River dead zone ever be alluring? … the “multimedia glam-rock meets classical baroque concert” seeks to start a bold conversation about our effect on the environment
Blouin ArtInfo: Glam Rock Environmentalism
Brooklyn Rail: The Rocky Horry Picture Show for the coming Apocalypse?
Gothamist: …Dark and satirical performance…
Exeunt: When writing about the genre-defying sound of LA band Timur and the Dime Museum, you might run out of hyphens—their charming glam-rock-cabaret-punk-opera-mischievous magpie-style requires experiencing first-hand to fully appreciate the influences embedded in their eclectic approach to music.
Neat Beet: On the vanguard of both drama and rock music is Timur and the Dime Museum, an experimental rock band out of LA that aims to fuse the two together into an explosive combination.
arts.meme: an art-rock tour of the daily dump of ecological disasters, with songs composed by band member Daniel Corral
2014 press for Collapse
LA Times: “nastily seductive… popsy, preachy, beat, grungy or ferociously apocalyptic, with texts to match.”
Fusion TV: “Think: revival tent-type screamer about the perils of Atlantic salmon. Think: a New Wave-style dance number about algae clumps brought together by rising oceans. Think: The kind of environmental message you can seriously not forget.”
Miami Herald: “Collapse” is so full of dark intensity and black humor that you’ll feel fine for experiencing it – but maybe a bit pensive as well.”
Miami New Times: “Intelligent, binary breaking, issue-driven entertainment that breaks binaries and reforms them into a multi-verse of music.”
Artillery Magazine: “It’s a coherent, even cogent, but stylistically unwieldy sequence of songs. It takes a special talent to impart that cogency, that urgency.”
NewMusicBox: “Daniel Corral, the Dime Museum’s accordionist and composer-in-residence, takes an inspired, unexpected approach, turning the whole thing into a psychedelic rock opera of sorts, with catchy hooks, doo-wop harmonies, and a pantheon of stylistic references. This spoonful-of-sugar tactic works wonders for the show, which is more likely to generate delight than despair. I almost feel guilty for enjoying it.”
Artificialist: ” I am well aware that ‘organic unity’ is not the sole criterion by which the quality of musical works ought to be judged, but when it is aimed for and achieved so impeccably, it’s hard not to ooh and ah.”
LA Downtown News: “Collapse has all the elements of high opera with elements of a twisted cabaret and rock and roll”
Stage Rows: “Stage Rows was among Thursday’s opening night’s audience and can testify that everything about Timur’s stage presence and Corral’s new tunes positively reeked of coolness.”
The Constance Gradual: “That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.”
Stage and Cinema: “the sort of music you would love to dance to if not for the guilt-trip inducing lyrics about bee colony collapse, radioactivity, flooding, nuclear disaster, atmospheric hypoxia, and the gradual trash plasticization of our oceans.”
Prayer for the World
Prayer for the World, live on June 1, 2014
Premiere by the Pasadena All Saints Coventry and Canterbury choirs
Meditation
For any number of voices and optional electronics. Duration is variable, to be pre-determined by the performers.
2015 press for Meditation
LA Times: “Corral’s wordless, a cappella “Meditation” enters into Ligeti territory with four singers treated to electronic feedback and mimicking what might be mistaken for an airplane in perpetual lift off. The performers looked terrified yet sounded amazing.”
Codec H Quartet
Codec H Quartet
Accordion quartet arrangement of Codec H, an earlier solo accordion piece.
Premiered in September, 2013 at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, in collaboration with writer Mandy Kahn.
Dislike
DISLIKE is a 21st century operatic documentation of a unique repository for the darker emotions swirling around the Internet. The sinister side of online anonymity and open-forum communication is examined by deconstructing 24-hours worth of comments on the most “disliked” video on YouTube. Taken as a singular libretto, the result is a surreal text full of anger, naivety, homophobia, desperation, and mischief. Meanwhile, eight accordions create a lush, post-ambient sonic environment inspired by a time-stretched interpretation of that video’s song. The resulting dichotomy depicts the Jungian shadow of the digital collective unconscious.
Dislike was premiered at REDCAT’s 2013 NOW Festival after a workshop at the Electric Lodge’s High Voltage Series! It featured Free Reed Conspiracy and The Peoples Microphony Camerata.
Read my article on LA Stage Times about Dislike
Dislike (live at Human Resources LA)
Performed by Dog Star Ochestra on June 17, 2017
2013 press for Dislike
Living Out Loud Los Angeles: “This was truly a treat for all, from our soft spoken dreamers to our extroverted realists, we all went home with a true image of how ugly we can be and how much help we all owe each other.”
Musings by a Dancing Poetess: “By the end of the piece, I hated YouTube; I hated the Internet, and I would have given anything to make it stop. But, my experience of discomfort was what created the power in the Corral’s social commentary.”
Local Looking Glass: “Its music was Baby’s chords played in discordant waves of sound a la Koyaanisqatsi.”
LA Weekly: “Composer Daniel Corral, whose work probes the weirdness of 21st-century living, has written a libretto called Dislike, about the most disliked YouTube video of all time.”
LA Stage Times: “Full of anger, naivete, homophobia, desperation, and mischief, these comments portray a Burroughsian narrative seemingly cut straight from the cloth of the collective unconscious.”
X-Ray Sunsets
X-Ray Sunsets album
Released July 1, 2013
A collection of songs written and arranged for Timur and the Dime Museum. We had played them live for a while before recording them.
All songs and words composed and arranged © 2013 by Daniel Corral, and published by Spinal Frog Music (ASCAP), except “Velvet Balloon” with music and words by David Tranchina, arranged by David Tranchina and Daniel Corral, and published by David Tranchina (ASCAP); “Distance of the Moon” with music, words and arrangement by Isaac Schankler, published by Process Pool Music (ASCAP); “Until the Break of Dawn” with music by David Tranchina, lyrics and arrangement by Daniel Corral, and published by David Tranchina (ASCAP); “Interlude” lyrics by Timur Bekbosunov (BMI). All tracks produced and mixed by Daniel Corral. Executive producer: Timur Bekbosunov and Art of Opera Foundation.
Recorded and engineered at Violahouse (1-11) except for keyboards, electronics, accordion, guitar, ukelele at Spinal Frog Studio (1-11) by Daniel Corral; bass, drums at Echo Manor by Chris Votek (8,10, 11) and Wonderland Recording Studio by Matthew Setzer (1-7, 9). Mastered by Michael Hateley at Lotus Mastering. Art design, photography and CD layout by Sandra Powers. T&DM name drawing by J.G. Quintel.
2013 press for X-Ray Sunsets
LA Weekly: “post-punk opera from the captivating Timur & the Dime Museum in support of their smashing, romantic, noisy, cabaret-infused new album, X-ray Sunsets”
New Classic LA: “The record, which was largely written, arranged, recorded, edited, mixed, and produced by band member and local composer Daniel Corral, is up on bandcamp now. Timur’s voice is as impossibly flexible as ever, and there’s an enormous range of sounds in the arrangements.”
Arches Magazine: “I know — on this page it looks like a total mess, but the ear loves it.”
Three Squares in the Shape of A Pärt
Three Squares in the Shape of A. Part
Live performance by Richard Valitutto at the Hammer Museum
Part 1: Clockwise Part 2: Counter-Clockwise Part 3: Static
LA Canon
2013 press for LA Canon
The Constance Gradual: “Sing, cymbals, like a lullaby; put justly, it is our best defense.”
2′ 42″
2'42" on Bandcamp
2’42” is an online series that reflects on the evolving nature of duration and form in this globalized new millenium.
A claim has been made that 2 minutes and 42 seconds is the perfect length for a pop song. This statement has been circling the internet, independently initiated by bloggers Joshua Allen and John Scalzi. It has been perpetuated by the likes of Boing Boing, Wired, NPR, and many more.
2’42” takes that statement to heart. Music written and/or recorded in cities around the world has been “corrected” to fit that “perfect pop song” length of 2:42. Each track is named after the city where its source material originated.
The Wing Eater
Featuring Catherine Strecker
Music by Daniel Corral
Cinematography by Nicole Emmons and Helder K. Sun
Sound Design by He Yin and Sage Lewis
Art Direction by Jesse Ayala and Sarah Sowell
Set Design by Sarah Sowell
Owl Puppet design by Celeste Leipham
Saorsa and Monster design by Nicole Emmons
Animation by Nicole Emmons, Celeste Leipham, and Kelsey StillmakerSelected screenings:
Mirror Mountain Film Festival, Ottawa. Canada
Quoting Artist Gallery, Femme Cinebox Screening, LA, CA
Citizen Jane Film Festival, Columbia, Missouri
Budapest Short International Film Festival, Hungary
Blue Plum Animation Festival, Tennesee
Savannah International Animation Festival, Georgia
Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles, California
Home Room Art Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Cinetoro, Columbia
Premis Ciutat De Palma, Spain
PACT Zollvervein, Germany
Red Cat Theater, Los Angeles, California
Beijing Film Academy Modern Creative Media College
Qingdao, China
Official Invitation from the Akbank Short Film Festival
Istanbul, Turkey
Zagreb at ASIFA Croatia World Animation Day at Art Cinema Tuškanac
Antwerp, Belgium at Cinema Zuid
Oslo, Norway at Sound of Mu GalleryZoophilic Follies
The adventurous puppet theater company Tandem and groundbreaking glam opera band Timur and the Dime Museum joined forces in Daniel Corral’s new puppet-opera, Zoophilic Follies. With comedic relish, Zoophilic Follies, explores the lesser-known stories about the famed inventor Daedalus and illuminates how technology can give flight to our wildest dreams and grusesome failures.
Zoophilic Follies premiered at REDCAT in September, 2011.
Music by Daniel Corral
Directed by Caitlin Lainoff
Libretto by Sibyl O’Malley2012 press for Zoophilic Follies
Times Quotidian: “That he is comfortable drawing from the whole world of music is no surprise given his musical pursuits, nor that the results are entertaining, beautiful, and interesting.”
2011 press for Zoophilic Follies
LA Stage Times: “We relish the comedy involved, and also pause to consider the transcendent power of hopes so large.
Out West Arts: “It is hard to ignore the musical energy of the piece… Zoophilic Follies cries out for further development and performances.”
Times Quotidian: “This thrilling, precious project was as entertaining as it was unique, driven by ever-engaging songs, instrumental solos, and tight ensemble playing.”
Lolo and Lola
Lolo and Lola is a puppetry piece about my grandparents’ experiences during WWII in the Philippines. It premiered in 2010 at the Boulder Fringe Festival.
Si Nanay Si Tatay arrangement for Lolo and Lola
A WWII-era puppet show based on a true story tells the haunting tale of the romance between a Filipino guerrilla fighter and a young schoolteacher.
Set to an original score, puppets travel through unfolding landscapes, transforming the lives of two young people struggling to survive in the war-torn Philippines.
In 1942, Mauro returns home after a grueling stint in a Japanese POW camp. Half dead from disease and scarred by the cruelties of war, he discovers solace through the letters of Olga, who lights a candle in her window as a signal to her love. Caught between the island’s volcano, the explosions of war, and sustaining power of love amid struggle, LOLO AND LOLA is an inspiring tale told in a theatrical, visually evocative style.
LOLO AND LOLA is the second puppet epic created by Caitlin Lainoff and Daniel Corral. Their previous show starring Catherine Strecker premiered at the Great Small Works International Toy Theater Festival and played at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.
Shadow, My Shadow
Directed by Bo Sul Kim
Choreographed by Nick Bruder
Dance by Robin Wilson
Music by Daniel Corral“Shadow, My Shadow” is a multimedia performance that follows a girl on her path to self-discovery with choreography, video and drawn animation. Lost beneath layers of worldly masks she seeks to find her true self and plunges deep into the fathoms of her mind, the consciousness of her soul. At the bottom of this ocean she encounters a mysterious creature: her own shadow.
Belly Button
“Belly Button” is a hand drawn animation based on childhood belief.
Following the cycle of life and death, the two belly button encounter, form a baby, turn into an old man and disappear back to another belly button.
Music by Daniel CorralAnimatic
Animatic, live at Yakima Seasons Music Festival
Premiere by the Yakima Chamber Orchestra
A 4 min. orchestral piece written for the Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, WA. Premiered on 10/16/09 by the Yakima Chamber Orchestra
With Structure
With Structure, live at the Yakima Seasons Music Festival
Played by the Kairos String Quartet on October 15, 2009.
A string quartet using only natural harmonics, written for the Kairos String Quartet as a part of the Yakima Seasons Music Festival.
4-Movement Music Boxes
For several years I made 4-movement music boxes based on the concept for Requiem for György Ligeti. They are smaller and easier to make, and I sold them and gave them as gifts.
Diasporic Music #1: Home
Diasporic Music #1: Home (violin arrangement)
Performed by Emily Call at The Blue Whale on Nov. 8, 2015
Diasporic Music #1: Home, live at the wulf.
Performed by Andrew McIntosh in 2008
Cadential Variations
Cadential Variations on Bandcamp
Cadential Variations is a 17 minute collage comprised entirely of endings taken from all styles of music. From Modest Mussorgsky to Modest Mouse or from Iannis Xenakis to Xavier Cugat, these endings have come from all corners of the musical world to be re-contextualized as a part of a larger linear continuum.
Cadential Variations is a collage comprised entirely of endings. The formal function of these endings is re-contextualized as they instead become a piece of a linear continuum. Consider what an ending can reveal about a musician’s relationship to death and mortality.
Some entirely subjective examples:
- In Le Sacre Du Printemps, Stravinsky tags one final stinger onto the end, as if telling death who will have the last word.
- Steve Reich’s Different Trains jolts itself into consciousness, all train engines and interlocking motion, until everything suddenly stops, leaving you mesmerized by its sudden absence.
- Post-song feedback/guitar-noodling is the rock star’s proclamation of his desire to defy death.
- The utter lack of endings in most techno music speaks volumes about the youth-obsessed mindset of rave culture, negating death by merely cross-fading to the next beat-matched record.
- The self-important high, long, ending note of a typical operatic aria elevates the singer’s final breath to a level of histrionic grandeur.
- The violent, tight, and heavy ending of a Sepultura song states that we may die, but we will do so fighting and strong to the end.
With this in mind, what could be said of a piece like Cadential Variations, which consists entirely of endings? Perhaps it might be considered morbid, dwelling obsessively on death and mortality. On the other hand, it might be uplifting; each death is not really an ending, but merely a transition to a new stage of existence.
Built
A devised, participatory, site-specific show staged in a new Condominium tower show floor that included an original civic planning multi-phase board game based on a community engagement research process.
Project Core Question: Where will we live?
Mandala Fanfare
Mandala Fanfare (MIDI demo)
Commissioned by Machine Project for the 2008 Santa Monica Glow Festival
Performed on the night of July 19, 2008 at sunset, midnight, and sunrise by an orchestra riding the Santa Monica Pier Ferris Wheel
Alice in Wonderland
By Alison Heimstead and Sibyl O’Malley
Music composed by Daniel Corral and performed by Daniel Corral and Andrew Tholl
Premiered at Walt Disney Concert Hall’s 2008 Toy Theatre Festival on June 14 and 15, 2008
Le Petit Macabre
Inspired by “Le Grand Macabre” by György Ligeti
Premiered at The Great Small Works Toy Theater Festival, Saint Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn NY, May 2008
Puppeteers: Catherine Strecker, Danielle Ash, BeomSik Shim, Jesse Ayala
Video Design: Roz Fulton
Singing: Harmony Jiroudek
Voice of Venus: Kari Rae SeekinsLe Petit Macabre album
Caleb and Caroline
Caleb and Caroline
Film by Mareca Guthrie
Music by Daniel Corral
Music Performed by the Formalist String Quartet and Daniel Corral
Emperor
Emperor
Directed by Thorbjorg Jonsdottir
A film about Joshua Norton, the first emperor of the United States of America.
Panache
Combination of vintage found footage, original material shot on 16mm, digital still camera, and optical printer created imagery. Running Time 3 minutes. Director, Nicole Emmons. Composer, Daniel Corral. Lady in Red, Lindsay Dunn. Huge thanks to Dave Emerson at Calarts for the optical printing education.
Music is an excerpt of my early piece Circle Limit I.
Requiem for György Ligeti
Requiem for György Ligeti
Requiem for György Ligeti is a giant music box created in memory of composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who died in June 2006. It was inspired by Ligeti’s Poem Symphonique, which involved 100 wind-up metronomes being set off at once. The Requiem was originally a part of Pandoras Box, a group installation that opened at the CalArts Main Gallery in March, 2007.
Requiem for György Ligeti played live
There are several ways to interact with the Requiem. The casual passerby can merely turn some of the silver knobs on the top of the box, each of which is attached to a different music box movement. If you are feeling more diligent, you can then push in the gold knob on the front of the box. This stops all of the movements from playing, so that you can wind up all 100. Once you have wound them all up, then pull the gold knob back out and they all start playing at once to create a micropolyphonic texture.There are several ways to interact with the Requiem. The casual passerby can merely turn some of the silver knobs on the top of the box, each of which is attached to a different music box movement. If you are feeling more diligent, you can then push in the gold knob on the front of the box. This stops all of the movements from playing, so that you can wind up all 100. Once you have wound them all up, then pull the gold knob back out and they all start playing at once to create a micropolyphonic texture.
Requiem for György Ligeti
Long Beach Soundwalk 2007 Long Beach Soundwalk 2007 Long Beach Soundwalk 2007 At CalArts 2007 At CalArts 2007 At CalArts 2007 At CalArts 2007
Nowhere: 3 Frames for Orchestra
Nowhere: 3 Frames for Orchestra, live at Calarts ROD
Performed by the Calarts Orchestra on Nov. 06, 2006
