Max Giteck Duykers is a composer whose work is dedicated to unusual beauty, unique forms, and collaborative projects. He frequently incorporates technology in performance in a manner which gives the performers room for individual expression. A veteran of multidisciplinary performance, Duykers is also interested in reworking developmental processes for artists to find their collective "sweet spot" and produce work which is personal, confronting, and starkly beautiful.
An album of his music featuring Ensemble Ipse, was released on New World Records in May 2019, with producer Judith Sherman. Of the album, Kathodik.it writes “[Duykers is] an absolutely original voice within the varied horizon of contemporary music.” Duykers was also recently commissioned by the National Parks Service, New Music USA and the Jerome Foundation to create a chamber opera for tenor, soprano, baritone, electro-acoustic percussionist (performing the Marimba Lumina) and mixed ensemble with the Paul Dresher Ensemble. Featuring a libretto by acclaimed playwright and filmmaker Philip Kan Gotanda, the piece is a comment on the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. The piece has been workshopped across the U.S. over the past several years, and was premiered at San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre in June 2022, and in NY in January 2023 as part of the OPERA America New Works Forum. The piece has also been generously supported by New York State Council on the Arts, The Brooklyn Arts Council, California Humanities, and the JA Community Foundation.
His numerous other commissions and premieres include the Avian Orchestra, The Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, the Oakland Youth Orchestra, the Seattle Chamber Players, Third Angle New Music, The BEO String Quartet, The Glass Farm Ensemble, PUBLIQuartet, Anti-Social Music, The Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, violinist Curtis Stewart, and numerous other individual performers. Duykers' Glass Blue Cleft was recently released by the Escher String Quartet on Bridge Records. Of the piece, Three Village Patch writes "[Glass Blue Cleft] is a piece for lovers of the string quartet, those amazed by how fiery and how dulcet these four-stringed instruments can range in expression." This and other pieces have been featured at music festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad, including the Seattle Chamber Players’ Icebreaker IV, curated by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross. His new piece Vapor/Blood for seven violas, electronics, and seven dancers, commissioned by the Tiffany Mills Company, will be premiered at National Sawdust in December 2023.
Duykers is a founder and co-director of Ensemble Ipse, a contemporary music performance group based in NYC. Ipse’s mission is to find common threads in works whose stylistic profiles appear, on the surface, as divergent. We present recent music that transcends aesthetic categorization and strive to create a forum for composers and sound artists on the edges of the mainstream of contemporary music, as well as those who have been traditionally underrepresented, including women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC. Since forming in 2016, Ipse has premiered 42 works, 14 of them commissions, performed works from numerous calls for scores for emerging composers from around the world, received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, New Music USA, the Queens Council on the Arts, NET/TEN, and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, as well as numerous donations from its large donor network.
Duykers has also been commissioned to compose music for over 50 theatrical, dance, film, and multimedia projects in the New York City area. With the theater group Prototype he was an artist-in-residence at HERE Arts Center in 2002-2004, and in 2000-2001 he worked for Philip Glass’ The Looking Glass Studios and Dunvagen Music Publishers, where he did studio recording, Pro-Tools post-production, music sequencing, music copying and music editing for the Philip Glass Ensemble, film scoring projects, and operatic works. He received a BM from Oberlin Conservatory where he studied composition with Randy Coleman, and has recently completed his Ph.D. at Stony Brook University where he studied with Sheila Silver. At Stony Brook he was also honored with the 2012 Ackerman Award for Excellence in Music. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Rebecca and sons Quinlan and Liev.