Kris McCormick is a multi-faceted professional musician, composer and audio producer. With experience working in film, hip-hop, opera, orchestral, gospel, electronic and long form improvisation, Kris combines his rigorous classical training with an adventurous attitude to create works that vary greatly in tone, sound-world, and genre.
As a composer of music for film and other media, Kris has composed, recorded, mixed and performed on three short-film scores: Shipwrecked Under Wasted Tables and Something to do with Loss by Sean Kiely and Veronika by Ace McColl, with another score for McColl currently in development. Kris also composed, sang, recorded and produced the music for Deliver Us, a podcast about the Catholic sex abuse scandal produced by American Media.
As a composer working in the classical tradition, Kris’s works have been internationally performed, and he has collaborated with groups and artists such as Sō Percussion, Metropolis Ensemble, Rhymes with Opera, highSCORE Music Festival, and Maryland Wind Festival. His music has been used in research of Psilocybin mushrooms with the Behavioral Biology Research center of Johns Hopkins. His works often feature multimedia and interdisciplinary elements such as In a Grove (2015), a concert-length chamber opera with projected illustrations, and Coast (2018), a work for scordatura strings based on the paintings of Winslow Homer.
As a classically-trained baritone, Kris has experience in operatic, art song, and choral repertoire, consisting of the title role in Gianni Schicchi, The Peculiar Case of Dr. H.H. Holmes for prepared piano and baritone by Libby Larsen and the Rückert-Lieder of Gustav Mahler. Kris specializes in early-music repertoire and currently works as a solo cantor and choral section leader at multiple churches in the Westchester County area. He has also sung chorally and been featured as soloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Peabody Singers, and The Susquehanna University Choir and Orchestra.
As a keyboardist, Kris is one half of the electronic duo filterdog (with Bronx-based poet and opera singer Brian Alvarado) and also performs with Brooklyn-based hip-hop artist Chocolate Brown in Chicken Over Rice, for which he is producer and songwriter.
Kris holds a M.M. in Composition from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins where he studied with Kevin Puts and Felipe Lara, and a B.M. from Susquehanna University, where he has visited as guest lecturer and taught composition. His other teachers have included Derek Bermel, Nina C. Young, Patrick Long and Jonathan Hays. He currently resides and records out of his home studio in Brooklyn, NY.
Photo by Ben Gottlieb
all scores and audio © Kris McCormick 2019 all rights reserved