Charles Corey is an American composer holding a Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory from the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied with Mathew Rosenblum, Eric Moe, Amy Williams, and Trevor Björklund.  His approach to composition exploits and subverts the relationships that exist between different tuning systems; the results of this process range from pieces that use standard tuning systems in unique ways to works that involve multiple tuning systems working in concert.  Corey's compositions are known for their unexpected, evocative harmonies and their strong dramatic arcs.  His music has been played across Europe and the Americas by performers including Cikada Ensemble, Iktus Percussion, Kjell Tore Innervik, Ere Lievonen, Inverted Space, and entelechron, with recent premieres in Amsterdam, Seattle, Urbana, and Buenos Aires.

 

Corey was recently awarded a Jack Straw Foundation Artist Support Grant and his score Courtship Dance of the Jungftak received third prize in the 2018 Young Virtuosos International Marin Goleminov Composers Composition.  His just-intoned string quartet, Syzygy, was released in 2019 on the Navona label, and works including Symmetries of Consciousness, Come to Dust, and The Antikythera Mechanism will be released on various labels later this year.

​

Corey is Director and Curator of the Harry Partch Instrumentarium and formerly served as Affiliate Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's Merriman Family Young Composers Workshop.  He conducted and directed world premieres of Partch’s The Potion Scene, The Bewitched—a Ballet Satire, and the original score, for voice and Adapted Guitar I, of U.S. Highball.  His current research involves the microtonal compositions of György Ligeti and the works of Harry Partch.