Rob Collier
Music
Cudahy, WI
Rob Collier is a composer and performer living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His music is meditative and hypnotic, utilizing repetition and simple compositional processes as a means of development. In November 2024, Ephem Aural, a Pittsburgh-based record label, released Arriving/Leaving, a collection of solo piano pieces Collier composed during an artist residency at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY. Other recent releases include a collection of chamber music entitled Radio Static Space Opera, released on the UK-based Hand Drawn Hand label in summer 2022, and Driftwood (and Other Found Objects), an album of music for Casio CZ-1 synthesizer, released by Noumenal Loom in February 2022.
Collier’s music has also been released on Geology Records, auralgamiSOUNDS, Ongoing Box, and Capstone Records in the United States, and Unlabel, WM Recordings, and Greed Recordings in Europe. His music has been performed at the Kennedy Center, the Speed Art Museum, the Clarice Smith Center for Performing Arts, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and various alternative performance venues across the country. Select compositions are published by Music Spoke.
As a music scholar, Rob has presented papers at the Popular Culture Association, Phish Studies, and Progect conferences. Rob’s research interests include the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Phish, Peter Gabriel, and the role of the electric bass in popular music. His article “It Isn’t Silly at All: Exploring the Depths of ‘Silly Love Songs’” appeared in the Rock Studies Journal in summer 2024.
Rob earned his DMA in Composition at the University of Maryland in 2010. He holds a BA from Bellarmine University and an MM from the University of Louisville. He teaches music theory and popular music at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.