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Brian Ciach (born Upland, PA, August 26, 1977) is an American pianist and composer known for his piano music and his orchestral composition, Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities. His work is characterized by free tonality and modality, unusual instrumentation ("food instruments": cabbages, mac and cheese, vegetable ocarinas), and unique formal concepts. As a pianist, he specializes in performing new music and is active as a piano improviser.

Education
In his early teens, Ciach studied piano with Harue Sato in Media, PA and Benjamin Whitten in West Chester, PA. In 2002, he earned his Bachelor's degree in Piano Performance from the Temple University Boyer College of Music under Charles Abramovic. Ciach then pursued two concurrent Master's degrees in Piano Performance and Music Composition from Temple University under Charles Abramovic and Matthew Greenbaum, Richard Broadhead, and Maurice Wright, graduating in 2004. He then studied composition privately with Richard Wernick from 2004-2006. In the summers of 2008-2009, Ciach studied composition with Samuel Adler at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2011, he earned a Doctor of Arts in Music Composition degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with Don Freund, Claude Baker, PQ Phan, Sven-David Sandström, and electronic music with John Gibson, and Jeffrey Hass.

Career
Ciach's music has been performed across Europe and the United States. He performed the world premiere of his Dance King (2014) for piano and tuba, commissioned by Paul Carlson at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference at Indiana University in May 2014. Chaconne for amplified cello and electronic music (2008) was performed by Roger Lebow at the 2014 Ussachevsky Memorial Festival of Electroacoustic Music at Pomona College in Claremont, California. European premieres of commissioned works include Rorate Caeli (2013) for SATB a cappella chorus, performed in Vienna by Chorus Delicti Wien (Vivian Ip, director) and Kentucky Folk Pieces (2013) for flute and piano performed in St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in London and the National Concert Hall in Dublin by Linda Chatterton, flute, and Matthew McCright, piano.

In 2012, Brian was a participant in the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, which led to that orchestra's performance of Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities. Brian was a participant in the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, where Alarm Will Sound premiered The Einstein Slide (2012, an addendum to Collective Uncommon), a piece inspired by a medical slide of Albert Einstein's brain recently acquired by the Mütter Museum. Also a composer of electronic music, his work Waterclocks was selected for a performance at the 2009 SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) National Conference.

Dedicated to new music, Ciach has performed world premieres as pianist in various concert halls in the US, including Carnegie Hall. He has performed and recorded all of his works for piano, including his Third Sonata.

Awards
• The Murray State University College of Humanities and Fine Arts Scholarly and Creative Activity Award (2014), for compositions and performances in the previous academic year

• The 2011 American Liszt Society’s Bicentennial Composition Competition, leading to a performance of his Second Sonata by Murray State Colleague, Matthew Gianforte, at the American Liszt Society's Bicentennial Conference

• The 2008 National Federation of Music Clubs Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Award for Second Sonata

• In 2008, Ciach won the Presser Music Award at Indiana University, which funded performances of two of his works: Mölna Elegy at the soundSCAPE new music festival in Pavia, Italy and 3-Minute Trio at FUBiS in Berlin, Germany.