Phillip Golub

Phillip Golub creates compositions that cross between fully notated scores and spontaneous improvisation. Grounded in classical composition as well as jazz, his experimental output merges the two lineages.

Born on June 1, 1993, he grew up in Pacific Palisades, a Los Angeles suburb. As a youngster he displayed an aptitude for sonic exploration at the family piano and absorbed his father’s extensive jazz record library. Crossroads High School in Santa Monica allowed him to pursue parallel tracks in classical music and jazz. He was selected for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program and performed in a jazz combo at the Colburn School. He completed a five-year joint curriculum offered by Harvard University and the New England Conservatory, receiving a B.A. in English from Harvard and an M.M. in jazz performance from the Conservatory. A further master’s degree was earned at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he studied composition with Michael Finnissy and Julian Anderson. His piano and improvisation teachers included Jason Moran, Bruce Brubaker, Joe Morris, and Ran Blake. For four years he participated in Vermont’s YellowBarn Young Artists Program. Initial attention arrived in 2013 when the National Children’s Chorus gave his song cycle Weathered and Revealed at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. The next year, the New York Virtuoso Singers presented his choral piece God’s List of Liquids, written to a text by Anne Carson, at Merkin Hall in Manhattan.

Golub’s music incorporates jazz not only through improvisation but also, to quote him directly, “rethinking the rehearsal process as a site of musical sociality and collective creation.” His works have been heard at leading festivals in the United States and Britain, and he has performed regularly as a jazz pianist with the Cecil McBee Quartet. He has appeared with the Sarafand Ensemble and, in 2020, founded his own ensemble, Tropos, which issued the album Axioms // 75ab on the Biophilia label that same year. In 2022 he released his debut solo album, Filters, on which he appears as pianist; the project examines musical repetition and exists in both keyboard and chamber-ensemble versions. The more jazz-focused group recording Abiding Memory followed in 2024 and featured cellist Daniel Hass, electric guitarist Alec Goldfarb, bassist Sam Minaie, and drummer Vicente Atria.