Brian Ciach

Brian Ciach (pronounced “SIGH-ack“, born 1977) is a composer, new music pianist, and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose music has been described as “remarkably inventive” (Bloomington Herald Times) and “beautifully scored” (New Music Box). Among his works are a Vegetable Requiem for hand-made vegetable ocarinas,Collective Uncommon, a set of orchestra studies inspired by the Mütter Museum (a medical oddities museum in Philadelphia), which calls for amplified cabbages, mac and cheese, and talking dolls in the percussion section of the orchestra, and the one-hour Variations Promethean for piano and electronics which features a fifteen-minute fugue, percussion mallets played on the sides, lid, and strings, and several vibrating dildos thrown into the piano.

The winner of the 2017-2018 American Prize and winner of the American Liszt Society Bicentennial Composition Competition, his works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra and Alarm Will Sound, among many others, and he has given world premieres of numerous works as a new music pianist in several concert halls across the US, including Carnegie Hall. Brian holds a Doctor of Music in composition from Indiana University, and two master’s degrees in composition and piano performance, as well as a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from Temple University.Brian is the Assistant Director and Instructor of Piano, Music Theory, and Composition at the Hunter School of Music in San Jose, California.

Compositions