Susan Maughlin Wood

Composer for Media and Concert Music

…is an award-winning independently contracting composer and artist seeking opportunities in film, apps, games and other media. While engaged in writing concert repertoire and chamber arrangements she is a visionary of passion projects including festival darlings music video “Spectratta” (and Butoh dance-fusion “Spectrutoh”) as well as documusic film “Coastal Fire: A Common Diary.” She holds a Master of Music in Film Composition from the Pacific NW Film Scoring Program at SFI, and served as Past President on the Board of Directors of the Seattle Composers Alliance.

Ah the Sheer Grace

(I have been electronically manipulating sound files of recordings of MRI machines and using these new sounds as the exclusive material for transitional interludes, as part of a collaborative compositional effort for an upcoming choral concert...)

It has been a powerful feeling to take this blaring, intrusive, mutation-conveying MRI noise and impose mutations back onto it, and in the process, take back a measure of control from an uncontrollable, impersonal void and reshape it into something with dignity and grace. The experience is transformative in the literal sense. In the same way that our challenges shape who we are as people, the underlying malignancy of the sound informs the end result which is all the sweeter for having transcended its own grim origins.

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The above statement, while absolutely true, may be the closest I have come to an actual BS Artist Statement. The thing is, it really is the clearest way I know how to convey it in words. That it has so very many words, I will make no further apologies.

You should come to our concert August 13! The program will be amazing. The title of this post is a lyric from "Dark Night of the Soul" by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. It is very cinematic. OH! Funny thing: having googled a bit was going to say the sound, with its grand chromatic voice leading chord progressions is similar to what I remember the Alan Silvestri score sounding like for "The Abyss," and weirdly, it turns out Gjeilo has collaborated with a different Silvestri on a companion piece called "Luminous Night of the Soul." I love the internet. Ok, back to work.