Corey Dargel (Composer/Voice) Corey Dargel (Composer/Voice)

Corey Dargel is a Texas-born, Brooklyn-based composer and singer-songwriter whose gentle assault on pop and classical idioms creates a tension that pervades his music. According to the New York Times, “Dargel [is] one of the more original and consistently provocative artists pushing at the margins of modern classical music and adventurous pop.” New York magazine says, “His ghostly baritone, precise delivery, and transfixing stage presence transform his performances into intimate plumbings of the audience’s psyche.” The New Yorker calls Dargel “a baroquely unclassifiable” composer “of ingenious nouveau art songs.”
 
Dargel’s most recent commercial album, Someone Will Take Care of Me (2010, New Amsterdam Records), is a double-CD set of song cycles adapted from his critically acclaimed music-theater pieces about hypochondria and voluntary amputation. WNYC’s New Sounds deems the album “a brilliant collection,” and in New Music Box, Frank J. Oteri writes, “Dargel is doing much more than writing extremely well-crafted songs. He is creating larger arcs of meaning, both musically and lyrically.”
 
Dargel studied composition at Oberlin Conservatory with John Luther Adams, Pauline Oliveros, and Brenda Hutchinson. His music has been the subject of international radio broadcasts including PRI’s Studio 360 and NPR’s Weekend Edition. He earned a tweet from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for his art-song settings of the remarks of Condoleezza Rice.
 
Dargel is a performer with, and founding member of, the Brooklyn-based experimental theater company, Laboratory Theater. He’s on twitter @dargel and on the web at www.automaticheartbreak.com.
 
Photo by Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler of New Catalogue

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