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Dorian Wallace

Composer, pianist, improviser, and music therapist.

About Me

Dorian Wallace is a composer, pianist, teacher, and music therapist whose work often explores socio political issues such as class consciousness, the unconscious experience, and is highly critical of authoritarianism, capitalism, dogmatism, censorship, and oppression. He is the co-founding artistic director of progressive and socially conscious new music collective Tenth Intervention, and bandleader of the improvisational septendectet The Free Sound Ahn-somble, both based in New York City.

He has collaborated with artists such as Nicholas Finch, NouLou Chamber Players, Paul Pinto, Charlotte Mundy, Pamela Z, Frank London, Experiments In Opera, Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana - EIH, Composers Concordance, Periapsis Music and Dance, Robert Ashley, Seneca Black, Matt Marks, RIOULT Dance, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, Kensaku Shinohara, and John Sanborn.

Dorian Wallace is a composer, pianist, podcaster, teacher, music therapy intern, and activist whose work explores the unconscious experience, and is an outspoken critic of authoritarian systems, dogmatism, censorship, and oppression. Together with violinist Hajnal Pivnick, Wallace co-founded Tenth Intervention, a progressive new music collective and concert series based in New York City. He is artistic director of improvisational septendectet The Free Sound Ahn-somble. Dorian is a founding member of Social Ecology Project, a politically driven new music trio. Alongside composer David Kulma, he co-hosts Trysteropod, a podcast about music and politics.

As a composer and performer, he has collaborated with artists such as Nicholas Finch, NouLou Chamber Players, Paul Pinto, Charlotte Mundy, Pamela Z, Frank London, Experiments In Opera, Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana - EIH, Composers Concordance, Periapsis Music and Dance, Robert Ashley, Seneca Black, Matt Marks, RIOULT Dance, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, Kensaku Shinohara, and John Sanborn.

His work has been presented at National Sawdust, NPR's Science Friday, Rubin Museum of Art, The Greene Space at WNYC & WQXR, Pompidou Centre, Palais Jacques Coeur, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Casa de las Américas La Habana, Cuba, Americas Society, New Music USA, Lower Manhattan Community Council, the Earle Brown Music Foundation, the Johnstone Fund for New Music, the Puffin Foundation, Caveat, New Music Gathering, Universidad de Costa Rica, Interlochen Public Radio, New York University’s Precarious Sounds // Sounding Sanctuary conference, and the 2018-19 Composer-in-residence with Exploring the Metropolis. Dorian works extensively as a dance accompanist at Martha Graham Dance Company, Barnard College of Columbia University, Juilliard, Doug Varone and Dancers, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. He is a teaching artist with The Mark Morris Dance Accompaniment Training Program. Having completed his coursework in music therapy at Montclair State University, Wallace is currently interning at Mount Sinai Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine.

He currently resides in Harlem, New York City.

My Jazz Story

My passion is connecting to other human beings through music. Music has been a vital part of our evolution as a species since the Paleolithic age and is an integral part of our history. We experience life through vibrations. My music is written to bring people together, to inspire social, political, economic, or environmental changes, to promote healing, and to inspire human transcendence in peace and solidarity.