George Hurd
George Hurd is a Berlin-based, US-born composer whose work focuses on classical composition, electronic music, and the strange, beautiful world where they intersect. He heads The Hurd Ensemble, an electro-acoustic chamber group dedicated to performing his music for classical ensemble and electronics. He’s composed for numerous artists and ensembles outside of his own, including Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion, violinist Carla Kihlstedt, Elevate Ensemble, and more. His music has been performed across the US from the Kennedy Center in DC, to the Palace of Fine Arts in SF, to the cutting-edge electronic music festival, Mutek. His work often fixates on the role of memory and location, using all electronic sounds made from scratch, recorded from his life and travels, each encapsulating a memory from the place and time they were recorded. His project *Echolocation* takes this idea even further. It’s an exploration-based series that focuses on his music made from location-specific audio recordings captured while traveling across Europe, New Zealand, and North America. In addition to his work with his ensemble, he has composed many electro-acoustic and chamber pieces, and a sprawling catalog of works for solo electronics. He was commissioned by the Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion to write [*What Stories We Tell*](https://youtu.be/v-PmziuB5kQ), a piece for percussion quartet and electronics. His debut album with The Hurd Ensemble, *Navigation Without Numbers*, was released on [Innova Recordings](http://www.innova.mu/albums/george-hurd/navigation-without-numbers) and includes a composition for violin and electronics written for the brilliant violinist/composer Carla Kihlstedt. His piece *Crépuscule*, commissioned/premiered by Elevate Ensemble, was written for chamber ensemble and electronics using only sounds recorded within Paris. He;s released a number of solo recordings including *Silent Winter* (for flutes, cellos, harp and electronics) on Berlin-based 7K Records, as well as *Nuremberg* for tape-processed pianos on London-based Accidental Records.