About

Isaac Roth Blumfield is a composer from Saint Paul, Minnesota, currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He writes experimental music for acoustic and electronic instruments, exploring resonance, materiality, and affect through expanded approaches towards instruments, objects, and electronics. His music looks for uncanny places and expressions that embrace the beauty, pain, and strangeness of life.

His music has been influenced through work with performers such as Schallfeld Ensemble, Ensemble Proton Bern, SWR Symphonieorchester, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Multilatérale, line upon line percussion trio, Ensemble Modern, and Quartetto Maurice at programs such as the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Darmstädter Fereinkurse, Klangspuren Schwaz, Impuls, the Banff Centre for Creativity, New Music on the Point, and Ticino Musica Festival. His music has been broadcast on Swiss, Austrian, and Southwest German public radio and has received scholarships and residencies from the Hirschmann Stiftung, Fondation Nicati- De Luz, and the SWR Experimentalstudio. Recent awards include a Protonwerk commission from Ensemble Proton Bern, the 2025 Adelbert W. Sprague Prize (Harvard University),  and honorable mentions for the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (Darmstadt) and Ensemble Écoute competition (Paris). 

In addition to instrumental music, he is active as a performer of improvised electronic music, performing in duos with Rebecca Lawrence, Alec Toku Whiting, and as a solo artist. He studied composition and electronics in Boston, Basel, and Vienna with Stratis Minakakis, Timothy McCormack, Caspar Johannes Walter, Svetlana Maraš, and Clara Iannotta. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Harvard University, studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku.