Christian Asplund

Experimental composers have options, although they often think they have few. They can absorb the fact that the audience for unusual music might be limited and just make work for themselves; they can let the absence of attention be a barrier to creation and stop writing altogether; they can gather others around them into societies of specialists and enthusiasts; or they can become composer-entrepreneurs who exhibit determination to make concerts and recordings happen no matter what. 

Christian Asplund is Professor of Music at Brigham Young University. He is a Canadian American composer and performer. He is also the most important incubator of New Music in LDS history. Although his award-winning music is performed, published, and admired widely, he was presumably tired of waiting for others to give him and his prodigious compositional output a home. So he made his own. In his garage. For years now, he has curated frequent concerts of his own and others’ music under various titles, most recently Avant GaRAWge. The latest concert (July 22, 2023) witnessed the live debuts of two entirely new ensembles: Brandoz (Oswaldo Machado, Randall Smith, Brynn Staker) and Spider Control (Christian Asplund, Rob Buchert). Asplund describes the groups this way: “Brandoz features a wide variety of talents and proclivities. Expect idiosyncratic comprovisation, virtuosic performance, and poetry. Spider Control is preparing to release their new album Bones and Other Hiding Places. Expect music and sound emanating from custom-built wooden-diaphramed speakers, activated by synthesizers, viola, voice, and other things. (Visit Asplund’s website for a staggering amount of fascinating music.)