composer
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.
LA Dance Chronicle: “…mesmerizing… wonderful…”
Stage and Cinema: “… a mind fuck.”
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 Jung
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 space
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.’
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
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 Tsai
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.”
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!
Created by Christine Marie.
Music by Daniel Corral, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and Laaraji.
Features excerpt from my pieces Polytope, Diamond Pulses, and One Line
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.”
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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. “
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.
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
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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 Stillmaker
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 Gallery
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’Malley
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.”
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 is a puppetry piece about my grandparents’ experiences during WWII in the Philippines. It premiered in 2010 at the Boulder Fringe Festival.
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.
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” 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 Corral
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?
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
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 Seekins
Film by Mareca Guthrie
Music by Daniel Corral
Music Performed by the Formalist String Quartet and Daniel Corral
Directed by Thorbjorg Jonsdottir
A film about Joshua Norton, the first emperor of the United States of America.
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.
Conceived and directed by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew
Designed and Drawn by Cristina Paulos
This is a toy theater adaptation of a contemporary fairy tale with the same title by Seattle playwright and writer Bret Fetzer.
This production was invited to PQ06 (Prague Quadrennial 2006).
