Professional Summary
Six-time American Prize winner and 2020 recipient of the Presser Foundation’s Graduate Music Award, Martin Hebel composes expressive, emotionally direct music to engage audiences through evocative representation. His socially-conscious compositions combine traditional and contemporary musical languages to address challenges of today’s diverse global community by exploring the common ground of shared human experiences—such as introspection, perception, inequity, and conflict—with music to inspire conversation and promote mutual understanding to spark positive change.
His current project, Uplifting Unheard Voices, amplifies the words of refugees by setting them in a new vocal-orchestral symphony. By amplifying these words, he hopes to motivate listeners to work to end the conflicts refugees flee. With support from the Presser Foundation’s Graduate Music Award, Martin travelled to Rome and interviewed refugees from the Middle East and Africa, facilitated by refugee agencies and guidance from the Vatican.
Martin’s portfolio includes instrumental and vocal chamber music, orchestral and wind ensemble works, and multimedia compositions involving video projection and electronics, as well as collaborations with other artists. With discography published by Ablaze Records and Centaur Records, he has collaborated with ensembles across the U.S. and Europe, including the Columbus Symphony in Ohio, Riverside Symphony in NYC, and Filharmonie Brno in the Czech Republic. He currently serves as Executive Director of the multimedia arts collective Evoke.
His Symphony No.3 in E Minor: Concert in Three Acts—an evening-long chamber-orchestral hybrid composition—was recorded by Filharmonie Brno, conducted by Mikel Toms, winning two American Prizes in 2019: the Ernst Bacon Memorial Award and the Orchestral Composition prize.
Martin Hebel received his D.M.A in composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 2021 and his M.M. 2018. He graduated with honors from the University of Connecticut in 2015 with degrees in composition and trumpet.
Learn more at martinhebel.com