Eric M. C. Gonzalez

is a composer of solo works, chamber pieces, electroacoustic and electronic music for film, theater, the concert hall, and beyond. Performing as agleam, Eric experiments with digital samplers, synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and vocals. Eric is creator and writer of the comic book REACH. Eric has also written collaboratively and solely on several theatrical productions.

Eric’s music and sound design for theater has been heard in Brujeria for Beginners, Mother Courage and Her Children, Only I, What I have Left To Eat, Crocus Hill Ghost Story, Don’t Wander Off, 44 Plays for 44 Presidents, Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys, The Turing Machine, Tingle Tangle, Style Is The Answer To Everything, Code: Preludes, and more.

Film music by Eric can be heard in A Fool’s Tango, the Rhode Island NetWorks Project, The Red End, and Stalled.

Eric has composed music for Zeitgeist, No Exit New Music Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Genkin Philharmonic, and more.

Focusing heavily on the electric cello, Eric maintains classical, contemporary, and extended technique performance practices. Eric performs in his own productions and recordings.

Eric was a Kulas Composer Fellow at Cleveland Public Theatre during their 2016–17 season. Eric was an inaugural member of Theater Ninjas’ Cadre, a team of creative producers who guide the design and implementation of projects, in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, Eric was a Creative Workforce Fellow, a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, supported through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. Eric won the No Exit New Music Ensemble Student Composition Commission Competition in 2011 and 2013. In 2013, Eric received the Bain Murray Award for Composition from the Department of Music at Cleveland State University.

Eric earned a Bachelor’s Degree of Music in Composition at Cleveland State University where he studied cello performance, and film music. At Cleveland State University, Eric performed in the Chamber Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, Experimental Music Ensemble, and mixed chamber ensembles.

Artist Statement

"My work depicts stories through sound and music. Explicit narrative, supportive sound design, and thoughtful art music soundscapes project compelling pictures that are unconventional, exciting, challenging, and rewarding. As a classically-trained cellist and composer, I have a deep understanding of the classical idiom as well as experimental and ethnic music, resulting in an eclectic stylistic range apparent in my music.

Whether the work is an independent piece of art, or a collaborative project, I project my distinctly cultivated artistic voice using diverse technology-based techniques. As a cellist I am comfortable improvising and combining extended performance techniques with electronic processing, while remaining true to the idiom of the instrument. I have performed in many different types of venues and musical contexts, and confidently adapt my performance to a diverse array of musical settings.

The sounds I create open a portal through which the listener’s mind moves freely and energetically, maintaining firm cohesion to the work whether it is solely my own, or a collaborative effort. Combining my eccentricities with all of the tools available to me, I enhance auditory experiences by pushing life through music, into the world."

Here are examples of my work as a composer, sound designer, and writer/creator of original work. This includes composition for the concert hall in contemporary classical music, sound design and composition for theatre, film scoring, and my own short theatrical multi-media productions.

The Turing Machine was a one-person-show created and produced by Theater Ninjas(now Maelstrom Collaborative Arts) in Cleveland, Ohio in 2015. I created music and sound design for this show that took place on May 20-24 in Survival Kit Studio. The play centers around Alan Turing, or rather a computer program designed to believe it is Alan Turing, portrayed by Ray Caspio. All pitch in my music for this show was determined through a computational and 12-tone method that involved running the words "ALAN MATHISON TURING" through an Enigma machine emulator. Violin is brilliantly performed by Genevieve Gilbert.

'Mexicanidad In The United States Of America' is a multimedia performance created, composed, edited, and performed by Eric M. C. Gonzalez. The piece is about Mexican-American, immigrant, and indigenous experiences and point of view. Performed on April 29, 2017 at Station Hope in St. John's Church, a station in the Underground Railroad, in Cleveland, Ohio.

I composed and performed the score for this NetWorks Rhode Island video featuring artist Deborah Baronas.

"Deborah studied textile design and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Based on her own work experience and family heritage, she explores the condition of the American worker and landscape.

She designs site specific installations that produce interactive environments with scrims, paintings, video, music and photography.

Deborah worked as a textile designer and creative director in the Apparel Industry in New York City, Los Angeles and Europe working with designers and textile manufacturers in global fashion centers.
Deborah now works as a design consultant and fine artist in Rhode Island. She lectures and exhibits at museums, galleries, universities, and textile companies throughout the United States and Mexico."

Video by Richard Ghoulis

East 21st street is an exploration of gestures and textures. The work takes advantage of the dulcet percussive tones of the marimba, and the different textures it can achieve. The opening gestures are active runs across the instrument, utilizing the entire range of the instrument, as it slowly winds down to a chorale texture. The piece enters an almost meditative state by the end, as pulsing chords are drawn out of the wood. East 21s Street was composed for and performed by Luke Rinderknecht as part of the No Exit New Music Ensemble composition workshop at Cleveland State University, December 1, 2013.

A piece I composed for solo Marimba. Inspired by the urban geography and architecture around the music department at school. Performed by Luke Rinderknecht at Cleveland State University.

Clarence Leone is the CEO and co-founder of Caffsys Inc., one of the leading personal computer hardware/software manufacturers on the planet. Early innovations developed by Clarence in consumer technology helped redefine universal user interface practices in the modern age. Mr. Leone and his company drove the high-tech market to it’s current state, where they continue to disrupt the technological landscape, and innovate with new products and concepts. Clarence has been a featured guest at numerous World Technology Awards summits, TED Talks, and All Things Digital’s D10 Conference. His work is recognized by awards organizations such as INT’L, A’, CLIO, LIA, and the Music Producer’s Guild.

This piece of electronic music was commissioned by No Exit New Music Ensemble, one of Cleveland’s only contemporary art-music groups. The work premiered as part of the ensemble’s Spring 2015 public concert series at Heights Arts, SPACES Gallery, and Cleveland State University.

The work consists of a monologue, setting, and story conceived and written by the composer. The recording features Ray Caspio, acclaimed Cleveland-based actor, portraying technology mogul Clarence Leone. The character of Leone inhabits a fictional universe in which a recorded sound artifact is discovered and manipulated by the other character in the piece, an unnamed musician, resulting in a bizarrely fantastical soundscape. All sound sources come from voice recordings, electronic guitar, and computer-generated synthesizers.

“A Concise Autobiography of Clarence Leone” is part of REACH, a comic book about people, technology, music, and madness.

This video features scenes accompanied by music I created for Theater Ninjas' 2014 Prelude 'Code', "an explorable theatrical experience inspired by the beauty of mathematics and the programmers who operate on the boundary between our messy human lives and the pristine world of symbols and equations behind the code that envelops our world. Drawing from the experiences of real-life programmers and the legacy of Alan Turing, this sensory, interactive performance created a kind of living science museum that used theater techniques and software concepts to cultivate and rekindle a sense of awe for the power of mathematics and highlighted the individuals who encode our humanity into modern technologic society. Code was funded in part by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, the George Gund Foundation and the Cyrus Eaton Foundation. Additional support provided by the Leonard Krieger Fund at the Cleveland Foundation."

Directed and Devised by Jeremy Paul Starring Ray Caspio, Christina Dennis, Christopher Hisey, Valerie Kilmer, Val Kozlenko, Ryan Lucas, Micael Prosen, Sean Seibert and the disembodied voice of Amy Liu Lighting Design: Ben Gantose Costume Design: Jamie Farkas Animation: Kyllea Kerg

The album version of music created for Code: Preludes can be heard here and on Bandcamp.

A short film by director John Gibian and Turnstyle Films for which I composed the score!

Aural Machinations (2013) Inspired by the City Symphony style of documentary filmmaking of the 1920s, Aural Machinations is a short portrait of an electronic music studio. A less objective approach is taken in the composition of image and music in this movie, creating a dark somewhat twisted view of what happens behind the scenes of film music and electronic music production.

Eric M. C. Gonzalez Sound Design Resume

Eric M. C. Gonzalez C.V.