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Nathan Thatcher is a composer, performer, arranger, and author based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has received commissions from numerous soloists and ensembles including yMusic, Attacca Quartet, Emblems Quintet, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, and Room 1078. His work Orogenesis was performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the recent festival “Look Around, Cincinnati,” of which he was a co-creator.

As an arranger, orchestrator, conductor, copyist, and producer he has collaborated with a wide array of musicians including Nico Muhly, Shara Nova, Sufjan Stevens, Son Lux, Daníel Bjarnason, Sarah Kirkland Snider, the National, Andrew Bird, Daniel Wohl, Nadia Sirota, Luke Howard, Sam Amidon, Nathan Schram, David Byrne, and others. His arrangements have been performed by the Kronos quartet, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, and the Grant Park Orchestra and chorus, and appear prominently on the record Away by the band Okkervil River. His name can also be found in the credits of the recent movie Knives Out by Rian Johnson for aid in the music production.

He is also the author of Paco, a biography and memoir about the discovery of the music of the Spanish composer Francisco Estévez. By the Skin of Our Teeth, an album of Thatcher’s music for string quartet was released in 2018. Thatcher completed a bachelor’s degree in music composition at Brigham Young University and a master's degree in the same at the University of Michigan.

Latest Release

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The physical reality of skilled human beings making music together is staggering when you really think about it. The complex visual and sonic (but non-verbal) communication taking place during a performance is incalculable and reveals the preparation and relationships of the players. I wrote these pieces with four particular human beings in mind–Bram Margoles, Cassidy Goldblatt, Ryan McDonald, and Hanna Rumora–striving to take into account what it would actually be like for them to play these pieces. There are five pieces for them to play as a quartet but also one piece for each possible duet–six in total–i.e. first violin and cello, second violin and cello, viola and cello, etc. This is intended not merely as an exploration of the string quartet in the abstract but of this particular string quartet comprising these particular people.

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