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Award-Winning Composer Rob Mosher Creates 31 Bach-Style Chorales In 31 Days In Celebration Of His 31st Birthday

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Rob Mosher is no slacker. The award-winning composer and soprano saxophonist decided to give himself the challenge of a lifetime: write 31 Bach-style chorales in 31 days in celebration of his 31st birthday and blog about the experience. The month-long project is already underway—it began October 20th—Mosher blogs his progress each day at www.robmosher.com and at http://kck.st/bsdEj8 updating about his compositional process and posting that day's chorale.

In addition, he's in the midst of raising $3,100—through kickstarter.com—in order to fund the recording and digital release of the pieces by his quartet—Mosher on soprano sax, Micah Killion on trumpet and flugelhorn, Peter Hess on bass clarinet and tenor sax and Nathan Turner on tuba. He's over halfway to raising the funds, which need to be pledged by November 19th, otherwise the project doesn't go through at all, part of Kickstarter's unique all-or nothing approach.

“Successful artists have always worked within their times," says Mosher, explaining why he's turned to the Internet for funding. “Bach had the church, Mozart had royalty, and Beethoven, later in his career, funded himself primarily through commissions."

The music Mosher's written for this project contains a distinct combination of Bach's warm harmonies, Debussy and Ravel's impressionist and passionate melodic phrasing, Stravinsky's tongue-in-cheek humor, and modern dissonances, all while remaining purely Mosher in how it all comes together.

“Many music students would probably cringe at the idea of doing something like this by choice," jokes Mosher. “I'm thrilled by the challenge of composing 31 pieces of music in a single month. I think I'll learn a lot about myself."

Recipient of a 2009 ASCAP Young Composer Award, Rob Mosher was born and raised in Canada. He graduated with a music degree from the University of Toronto and participated in the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. Shortly thereafter, in 2004, he relocated to New York City where he is active as a bandleader, freelance oboist and a jazz sideman. He served as principal oboist in the Brooklyn Conservatory Orchestra in 2005-6 and was a member of the 40 Fingers Saxophone Quartet from 2001-2004.

In 2008 Mosher released his critically acclaimed debut CD The Tortoise with his 10-piece band Storytime, which the Hartford Courant called “heartbreakingly beautiful, with melodies that stop the listener in [their] tracks." Mosher's other musical projects include a jazz quartet: Rob Mosher's Supervillans; the Rob Mosher String Quartet, a classical ensemble with soprano sax replacing 2nd violin; and Soprano/Soprano, a classical duo with soprano sax and soprano operatic voice, and a guitar duo with Classical Guitarist Rupert Boyd.

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields. Launched in April, 2009, Kickstarter has engendered rave reviews as a new model of funding the arts. The New York Times calls Kickstarter “an unexpected influence on indie culture, a new model for a D.I.Y. generation."

Click here to help fund Mosher's project.

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