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Patrick O’Malley

About this Artist

Patrick O’Malley (1989) is an emerging composer currently living in Los Angeles and completing his Master’s degree in composition at the University of Southern California. He grew up in Indiana, where he cultivated an interest in composition from the music at the local orchestra, his parents’ record collection, film scores at the movie theater, and even MIDI compositions for videogames being written at the time. His own work spans many of the contemporary mediums for classical music (orchestra, chamber ensembles, vocal music, film scores etc.), and often explores the musical interplay between emotion, color, energy, and landscape. Often when writing a new piece, O’Malley considers the listener’s imagination as much as every other musical element - an admittedly and enjoyably subjective endeavor. 

Most recently, O’Malley has been recognized and/or performed by organizations including The American Prize (3rd place in orchestral music, and nominee in wind band and chamber music, 2014), the Boston New Music Initiative, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (finalist in 2012 and 2014), and Fulcrum Point New Music Project. He has spent summers as a student at various music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin Festival, and FUBiS composition course in Berlin. He is gratefully indebted to his private teachers over the years for helping guide his work, the most recent of which include Andrew Norman, Samuel Adler, and Frank Ticheli. O’Malley’s other interests include conducting, running, and endlessly listening to music.