I am a composer, theorist, guitarist, and educator, currently freelancing in the Ottawa area. My newest album Electric Currents is available on Bandcamp and major streaming services:

My compositional activities are wide-ranging, with particular emphases on music for the electric guitar with live electronics and acoustic solo works and chamber music. I have had compositions performed at numerous venues in the US and Canada by performers including the Cowan-Cicchillitti Duo, Hub New Music, Madawaska String Quartet, Arraymusic, Seth Josel, Julian Bertino, Sarah Albu and William Beauvais. My acoustic compositional work has been supported with a grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

I have performed original music with electric guitar at events including the Canadian University Music Society’s annual conference, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium and the 21st Century Guitar Festival. This work has been commissioned by Vancouver New Music and supported with a grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board.

As a guitarist, I can play classical, jazz, and popular styles, as well as more progressive and avant-garde work. I am available to play at weddings, receptions, or events, in addition to solo and ensemble work. You may contact me at: https://sundarsubramanianmusic.com/contact/

I currently teach guitar (and bass and ukulele), music theory and composition, beginner piano, and music technology/recording/production. J’enseigne en français ainsi qu’en anglais. My teaching site is here: https://subramanianmusiclessons.ca

My strengths with music technology include recording, mixing, and mastering, as well as synthesis, signal processing, and DAW-based composition. My creative work includes the development of signal processing applications for the electric guitar and performance with live electronic processing. I am also available for audio recording and engineering projects.

As concerns university-level teaching, I served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Music Technology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, from Fall 2015 through Spring 2018. Prior to teaching music technology, I have previously taught subjects including music theory, counterpoint, analysis, popular music, and world music at University of Ottawa, Carleton University, University of Regina, and University of Windsor. I completed my PhD in music composition through the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2011. I completed my undergraduate studies at Carleton University in Ottawa in 2001 and my MA in composition at York University in Toronto in 2005.

My areas of theoretical research include the analysis of popular music and the analysis of pitch structures in post-tonal music. My analysis of Reginald Smith Brindle’s El Polifemo de Oro has been published in Ex Tempore: A Journal of Compositional and Theoretical Research. With Melvin Backstrom, I presented an analysis of the Grateful Dead’s “Blues for Allah” at the November 2018 conference of the Society for Music Theory. In October 2014, I was awarded the Luther Brown Prize for my presentation “’Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues’: Form, Syntax, and Rhetoric in the Music of the Blues Queens of the 1920s” at the International Conference on the Blues at Delta State University.