Chambers Cryptogram for Jazz Quintet and Wind Symphony

 

Born in 1991 in Hurricane, West Virginia, Eli Chambers developed a passion and curiosity for music at an early age: by first grade, he was taking guitar and piano lessons, singing and acting onstage with a local theatre company, and building his own percussion instruments. By age ten, he had taught himself to play the bass guitar, banjo, and mandolin, and by middle school he was behind the drumset with the high school jazz band.

An opportunity was never missed to write original music for himself, friends, or scholastic ensembles— an ambition that afforded Eli the opportunity to earn a BFA in Music Composition from Ohio University in 2015, where he received The Distinguished Professor Award in Music Composition for four consecutive years of study.

During his time at Ohio University, Eli formed the Triangulus percussion trio with D. Turner Matthews and Jake Schlaerth, presenting music at the West Fork Music Festival, the Electro-Acoustic Barn Dance Music Festival, and The Margaret Guthman New Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech.

Eli was a recording artist on the Ohio University Wind Ensmble’s 2013 Grammy-nominated album Mothership. The following year, he premiered Matthew Burtner’s Deep Earth, a commission from the Athens International Video and Film Festival.

He has been commissioned to compose original works for the Otterbein Wind Ensemble, ChamberBrews string quartet, shows on the Scavengers Podcasting Network, and the Ohio University Wind Symphony’s annual Ampersand New Music Festival. His most recent contribution to the Ampersand Festival, Cryptogram, was recorded in 2017 with production and engineering from University of North Texas Wind Symphony director Dennis Fisher and Mark J. Morette, owner/lead engineer of Mark Custom Recording in New York. In 2019, the composition was eligible for Grammy nomination in the category of Best Classical Composition.

Eli currently resides in Columbus, Ohio and is active in a broad array of musical projects. He is the bassist for bands such as jazz ensembles Radarhill and Safety Squad, Salsa group Yumbambé, Americana acts Hello Emerson and Fables, and local pop supergroup Arch City Lights. Eli a percussionist with electronic chamber-rock trio Triangulus and jazz quintet ECQ. He is also guitarist in rock group Lowlights and post-rock group Maxwell Hedron, on whose debut album Eli recorded all tracks.