Alex Temple

Alex Temple writes music that distorts and combines iconic sounds to create new meanings, often in service of surreal, cryptic, or fantastical narratives. She is particularly interested in reclaiming socially rejected, “cheesy” sounds, playing with the boundary between funny and frightening, investigating lost memories and secret histories, and telling queer and trans stories. In addition to performing her own works for voice and electronics, she has collaborated with performers and ensembles such as Mellissa Hughes, Julia Holter, Isabel Leonard, wild Up, Spektral Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Temple has played keyboards with the chamber-rock group The Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles and made sounds using her voice, synthesizers, and household objects with a·pe·ri·od·ic. She spent two years working for the New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program for young composers. She is an assistant professor of composition at Arizona State University.