Student Feature: Alex Gray

Keeping track of UT College of Music alumnus Alex Gray’s creative endeavors is somewhat challenging. You might want to crack open a spreadsheet.

Since graduating from UT with his bachelor’s in composition in 2018, then from New York University with his Master’s of Music in composition in 2020, he’s started his own record label named Cmntx Records (pronounced “Semantics Records”), continued composing original music, and even worked on a number of short films. But what is perhaps more impressive is that he’s done all of this with a full-time job–and not just any full-time job – Alex works under Philip Glass as a production assistant.

Glass’s composition work has earned him recognition as “one of the most influential modern composers” (the Guardian), with a voluminous body of work that includes numerous operas, chamber works, symphonies, ballets, and film scores–three of which have been nominated for Academy Awards. He is widely considered the founding father of the musical style that is sometimes called “minimalism.” He also founded the Philip Glass Ensemble, which is dedicated to performances of his work. All of this has made it a very exciting opportunity for Gray, but the most recent opportunity was an honor that came as a surprise–he performed alongside Glass at Carnegie Hall in March. The benefit concert included a wide variety of collaborations, including Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal, and Saori Tsukada, who read poetry during the performance.

“In 2021, Glass did a virtual recording for the Tibet House benefit concert. He had recorded it in two layers, as piano four hands,” he said. “This year, they wanted him to do it as a real-live premiere. I began transcribing the piano and we had forgotten about the multiple layers. When I brought it to him, he asked ‘So which part are you going to play?’”

Gray’s path for these opportunities traces back to, of all things, a podcast. While living in New York, he began listening to a podcast called Meet the Composer, hosted by Nadia Sirota. One of the episodes featured Nico Muhly, a prolific contemporary composer who previously said he started as Philip Glass’s intern and then became his production assistant. An internet search revealed that Glass happened to be hiring an intern at that moment, and Gray got the job. Like Muhly, he was later offered a permanent position as a staff member after completing the internship.

But composition wasn’t always Gray’s goal. In fact, when he first came to UT as a first-year student, it was as a jazz saxophone major. Although, looking back, the interest in composition started earlier than that, he says.

“The reason I started composing was because I was in a saxophone quartet in high school that could not afford sheet music. So I decided to make the music scores myself.”

Once at UT, he was eventually encouraged to pursue composition by his professors, who saw the way that composing music energized him. He also emphasizes how being exposed to different styles of music broadened his own perspective on the act of composing itself, particularly in his experience with the electroacoustic ensemble, directed by Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition Jorge Variego.

“Even though we were practicing performance, it really made me reframe how I was thinking about composition,” he said. “It opened up my mind to thinking about music in different ways. It’s not just about notes on a page, but it’s about listening and opening my mind.”

From UT to Carnegie Hall, the key to his success in all of this: “Trusting your gut,” he says. “I would tell my past self, ‘If this is what you want to do, you’ll commit yourself more to it. If you don’t want to show up for the job, you won’t give your 110 percent.”