Meet Gustav Hoyer of Fort Collins

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gustav Hoyer

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am a composer of orchestral music. I began my journey later than many classical musicians with the discovery of orchestral music in high school. My bio is available on my website: (https://gustavhoyer.com/about). I continue to create new music by commission from ensembles and performers around the US.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The life of a creative artist is a life of entrepreneurship. You must labor to create new works before anyone knows that you exist. You must build a portfolio of representative work that establishes your credibility and creates awareness of your art. For an orchestrally-focused artist, this is a massive challenge. Obtaining performances of orchestral music is very difficult as, historically, orchestras are not generally open to performing new compositions. This is starting to change, and I have noted that many more orchestras are starting to program the work of living composers, but it is still a very rare opportunity. The scarcity is compounded by the fact that orchestral music requires large groups of highly skilled and specialized musicians. To create recordings requires not only players, but engineers, facilities, distribution channels. And, if these things come together, the reality of the music industry in general is that people do not pay for recorded music. Streaming royalties paid to artist are less than 8% of all the money paid to platform providers. This makes the funding and presentation of large scale orchestral music extremely difficult, financially, logistically, and artistically. I have a particular drive that has proven unquenchable, so I have persisted in creating and producing new recordings of orchestral music.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am an anachronism. I create new, large-scale, classical music that draws on the vocabulary and techniques of prior centuries to create musical stories that are fully modern. My creative voice and innovation is not strictly found in the surface-level elements of music (e.g. novel instrumentation, esoteric harmonies, angular textures) but is one-level submerged in highly complex and intricate musical structures that create musical narratives. I am fascinated by the subliminal possibilities of the deep proportions of instrumental storytelling that use memorable musical elements to create a tapestry of structure over time. I am interested in how musical structure, a phenomenon that is only experienced on the canvas of memory, can draw upon deep proportions from the natural world (e.g. the golden mean) such that they reflect and resonate with the experience of the listener in unnoticed ways. My music is intricate yet still provides tonal and harmonic familiarity so that even the untrained listener’s musical comprehension can support the creation of larger scale musical narrative.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
The creation of new music is ubiquitous in all genres, including classical music. Throughout history, many of the most beloved works that we have received into our concert halls and homes was commissioned by special people who were prepared to fund the creation of new works. Our modern time has a highly robust economy of popular music production, but there are opportunities for people today to commission new orchestral works that will stand out from the world of commercial music and may prove over time to be a gift to future humans who follow us.

Pricing:

• Commissions for new music are priced upon request

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gustavhoyer.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/gustavhoyercomposer
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gustavhoyer.composer.impresario/
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/Y7EQb0s23a8
• Other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Hoyer