Alan Hankers

Alan Hankers (USA) is an award-winning composer and pianist currently residing in New York. His music focuses on creating sonic landscapes that often explore the dichotomy between the explicit and the abstract. His works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe by ensembles such as the Texas State Symphony Orchestra, South Carolina Philharmonic Repertory Or-chestra, North Shore Symphony Orchestra, Calidore String Quar-tet, Unheard-Of Ensemble, and many others. He currently serves as Composer-in-Residence for Ensemble Edge, a chamber choir (with strings) based in Aarhus, Denmark. In addition to concert music, Alan has been an ac-tive film & television composer in New York City, where he freelances as a composer and assistant at various post production houses. Alan is currently a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University, where he teaches undergraduate courses in music theory & composition.

Oasis was inspired by the music of Palestrina and Gabrieli. In this contrapuntal music of the past, each individual voice is clearly defined and self-contained, and yet, it functions as a part of the overall ensemble. “When listening to this music, I initially hear it in this way before I gradually tune out from any specific voice, transforming the explicit melodic profiles into an abstract totality of color”.
The work is structured around these moments of “abstraction”, where the harmonic language and jovial rhythms allude to this older music, however, their clarity is lost in the overall density and cacophony of the tex-ture. The music that surrounds these sections is very ethereal; slow moving lines subtly emerge and disappear back into a desert of clusters. The title of the work represents the moments of reprieve from this static wasteland.
Oasis was commissioned by the Anima Brass Quintet.