Background
PhD, Northwestern University
Noah Jenkins is a composer and violinist/violist from Oregon, now living in Chicago. He holds a PhD in Composition and Music Technology from Northwestern University and a BM in Composition and Violin Performance from the University of Oregon.
At Northwestern, Noah has taught courses in music theory, aural skills, and composition and is the founder of the Practicum for Rational Intonation and the Music Experience of Ratios (PRIMER), a scholarly collective funded by the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.
In January 2025 John Adams conducted the LA Phil New Music Group in the premiere of Not a dream sound, but a sound which sleeping we had really heard, a work for string orchestra, keyboards, and antiphonal percussion (an LA Phil commission). In February 2025 ~Nois saxophone quartet and Varo String Quartet opened Chicago’s Frequency Festival with the premiere Poetics of Space Translation Symmetry, a 40-minute string and sax octet that features a spatial arrangement with the strings centered in the performance space and the saxophones posted around the perimeter.
In 2024 Sawyer Editions released Without Persistent Environments, an album of Jenkins’ two electroacoustic trombone pieces recorded with Chicago trombonist and composer Riley Leitch. Peter Margasak (Bandcamp) praised the music’s “sustained lines awash in luxurious overtones” and its “focus on the dynamic interaction of sound drifting into eternity.”