Jacob Cooper - Sunrise (2021) Hi-Res

Sunrise is an expansive, incandescent, haunting electro-acoustic work jointly composed and performed by Jacob Cooper and Steven Bradshaw. Created during the 2020–21 pandemic, this alluring, kaleidoscopic piece grows into a tsunami of sound while it casts an eye (ear) back 100 years to derive its text from a popular song composed during the 1918 pandemic: “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise.”

Cooper and Bradshaw constructed Sunrise via the internet—Bradshaw recording vocal melodies and improvisations that Cooper subjected to electronic manipulation. In this fashion—back and forth, again and again—they spent months composing and realizing the music. (In addition to Cooper and Bradshaw, pianist Dynasty Battles, violinist Clara Kim, and flutist Timothy Munro also contribute performances to the work.)

Jacob Cooper has been lauded as “richly talented” (The New York Times) and a “maverick electronic song composer” (The New Yorker). His music has been commissioned and performed by such ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, Eighth Blackbird, and the Calder Quartet and released by Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, and other record labels. The recording of his string orchestra work Stabat Mater Dolorosa (New Artisans), which the New York Times described as “exhaustingly poignant,” was an NPR Top Ten album in 2020.

A founding member of Variant Six and The Crossing (a Grammy-winning vocal ensemble dedicated to new music), Steven Bradshaw has appeared as a soloist with Bang on a Can, the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, and many other groups and recorded and toured with Roomful of Teeth. He premiered Ted Hearne’s Placeat the BAM Next Wave Festival and will reprise his role in it with the LA Philharmonic. He also premiered and gave 300 performances of David Lang’s lifespan. Also a noted visual artist, Bradshaw has exhibited his work at a number of galleries throughout the country.