William Brittelle

William Brittelle is a composer and multi-instrumentalist devoted to bridging the gap between pop music and New York's downtown classical scene, and a co-director of New Amsterdam Records. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

William Brittelle (born 1977) is a Brooklyn-based composer of post-genre electro-acoustic music. His primary musical mentors include Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici, Mike Longo (longtime pianist/arranger for Dizzy Gillespie), and punk guitarist Richard Lloyd of Television. Brittelle’s work is characterized by the melding of complex thematic ideas, rhythms, and formal structure with the visceral power and surface appeal of pop/rock music, a duality perhaps best represented by his most recent album Loving the Chambered Nautilus. Written specifically for the players of ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble), Nautilus is a series of electro-acoustic chamber music pieces melding classic synthesizer sounds and drum programming with virtuosic and textured classical composition. The album has been hailed as a hallmark of the next wave of classical composition. Following an NPR All Things Considered feature, Nautilus hit #1 on Amazon’s Chamber Music Chart. The New York Times labeled the work “bright and joyous,” and MUSO dubbed it “a fast, fun, freedom-fueled flurry of a record.” Perhaps most powerfully, Classical TV stated: “William Brittelle is creating a body of work that has no precedent, and marks him as a one of the most promising heirs of the vital American maverick tradition.”

Previous to Nautilus, Brittelle released Television Landscape, his fully composed, post-apocalyptic art rock concept album scored for orchestra, rock band, synths, and children’s choir. Dubbed “irresistible” by the New York Times and “a glorious reclamation of lush sounds crusty critics have vilified for years” by Time Out NY, Television Landscape drew substantial praise from both rock and classical critics, leading the Los Angeles Times to muse, “You might wonder if Jane’s Addiction had discovered the soul of Debussy.” eMusic called the album “expansive, anthemic, all-encompassing, shot through with raw emotion” and named it to its ”Albums of the Year” list. The album’s centerpiece, the nostalgia-soaked soft rock ballad "Sheena Easton," was singled out by Popmatters for its “complex orchestrations” and “mind-bending arrangements” and taste-maker rock blog My Old Kentucky called the track “one of the more interesting tunes I’ve heard in a while.” The Believer magazine chose the album’s closing track "The Color of Rain" for inclusion in its prestigious annual music issue.

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