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Colin Stack, Composer/Songwriter
11 Anson St. Apt 3, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
 (617-877-0178) 
colin_stack@hotmail.com

Colin StackColin Stack has been writing, producing, coaching, and directing his own music professionally since 1994. He began as a self-taught singer/songwriter/instrumentalist, singing in both solo and ensemble situations while accompanying himself on guitar, piano, and bass. The big turning point in Mr. Stack’s musical career came at age 15 when he attended the National Guitar Summer Workshop in Connecticut for the first time. After that summer, he began singing, playing, writing, and recording his music all the time.  In the fall of
1994, he assembled his band “The Project” and continued to record and perform with them until they broke up in 1998.  Various Project members still appear periodically on Mr. Stack’s solo albums.

Mr. Stack received the B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music.  In January of 2004, Mr. Stack’s Identity Crisis, scored for six instruments, won the New England Conservatory Honors Competition for John Heiss’ Contemporary Ensemble. He was also invited by the
Harvard Group for New Music Series to have a performance of his Perpetual Déjà vu, written for saxophone quartet, during their 2002/2003 season at the university’s John Knowles Pain Hall.

Mr. Stack is one of the founding members of the Socially Awkward Composers, a group comprised of five composers that emerged from the New England Conservatory's graduate and doctoral programs. The group came together out of a shared love of experimentation and a willingness to blend forms. They have had performances in and around Boston at the Zeitgeist Art Gallery in Cambridge and at Forsyth Chapel in Jamaica Plain (one of Boston's suburbs) for the Forest Hills Trust.  The group was just recently featured in the Boston Globe.

Mr. Stack assembled "The Leftovers", a chamber group of woodwinds, saxophones and brass, in the fall of 2003 to record and perform his next collection of pop-art songs titled  BANG! BAM! BOOM!  The group premiered before a live audience in February of 2004 and has had subsequent performances in and around Boston since then.  BANG! BAM! BOOM! was released on June 9th of this year and is Mr. Stack’s fifth CD on his own label (Stacktone Music).

Colin Stack assembled his new gigging band “Novelty Act” in January 06’ and his played monthly shows in Boston. New York, and Connecticut since its’ initial conception.  The band features Mark Cocheo on guitar, Thaddeus Bell on piano, Lucy Railton on cello, Harry Cherrin on saxophone, and Chip Hubbell on percussion. The music can best be described as an eclectic mix of rock, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, jazz, folk, and vaudeville.   

Colin Stack has four albums on his own label as a singer/songwriter, each devoted to exploring a variety of musical genres.  He debuted in 1997 with Scenes From A Dream accompanied by his band “The Project.”  His second CD titled Cream, Sugar, and Dirty Secrets (2000) presents rock and funk juxtaposed with jazz and bluegrass.  Each song on this album is cast with a different group of musicians providing a variety show of many styles. Commercial Suicide (2002) contains over 70 minutes of pop-art songs recorded with chamber orchestras, jazz combos, string quartets, rock/funk bands, and electronic settings, making this CD his most eclectic musical achievement.  Both Cream, Sugar, and Dirty Secrets and Commercial Suicide have recently been re-released  in the summer of 2004 with new songs recorded from 2002-2004, making the two CDs well over sixty minutes each.  Mr. Stack’s concert music is compiled on One Time Around The Block (2004), featuring 79 minutes of  instrumental music composed for string quartets, chamber ensembles, wind quintets, brass quintet, and  full-length orchestra . His fifth CD titled BANG! BAM! BOOM! features his chamber-pop ensemble “The Leftovers” and contains 50 minutes of music composed for wind ensemble and voice.