Isaac Roth Blumfield is a composer from Saint Paul, Minnesota, currently based in Basel, Switzerland. He writes experimental music for acoustic and electronic instruments which explores resonance, materiality, and memory through expanded sonic approaches towards instruments and objects. His music looks for the strange spaces between subjective and unconscious experience, exploring uncanny places between beauty, pain, and strangeness.
His music has been influenced through studies with composers such as Stratis Minakakis, John Mallia, Timothy McCormack, and Caspar Johannes Walter and through work with performers such as ensemble sonic space basel alumni, Schallfeld Ensemble, violinists Austin Wulliman and Chris Otto, line upon line percussion trio, Ensemble Modern, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, guitarist Francesco Palmieri and Jamie Monck, and Quartetto Maurice at programs such as the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, the Banff Centre for Creativity, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, New Music on the Point, Valencia International Performance Academy, Ticino Musica Festival and Freie Universität Berlin im Sommer. He has participated in masterclasses and worked with composers such as George Lewis, Chaya Czernowin, Stefano Gervasoni, Miya Masaoka, Clara Iannotta, Christian Wolff, Sarah Nemtsov, Pierluigi Billone, and Sabrina Schroeder.
His music has been broadcast on Swiss Public Radio and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Fondation Nicati - De Luze, and the Hirschmann Stiftung. He graduated with his Bachelor's degree in composition at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with John Mallia and Stratis Minakakis and received Master's degree in composition at the Hochschule für Musik FHNW in Basel, Switzerland, studying composition with Caspar Johannes Walter and electronic music with Svetlana Maraš. He is currently pursuing post-graduate studies at MDW in Vienna, studying with Clara Iannotta.