August 31, 2026
Alyssa Weinberg in her office at the University of Texas at Austin
The Butler School of Music welcomes composer Alyssa Weinberg to campus as its new Assistant Professor of Composition. Though Weinberg is joining the Butler School for a one-year appointment, her connection to the Longhorn community began well before her arrival in Austin. Her music has been performed by the Butler New Music Ensemble, including another performance scheduled for this spring, and she previously served as a composer in residence.
Her relationship with the School grew further when former Butler professor Omar Thomas invited her to teach composition classes remotely when he was unable to do so himself. Those experiences gave Weinberg an early sense of the community she would eventually join as a faculty member.
“It seems like such a wonderful department and community, so when I saw the job listing I was like, ‘That place is great,’” Weinberg recalled.
Alyssa Weinberg has a style of composing that even she acknowledges is hard to define. “I write in my own style,” Weinberg said when asked how she would describe her approach to composition. Rather than relying on a collection of familiar adjectives to characterize her music, she believes the best way to understand it is to listen. For Weinberg, sound itself is the starting point, and increasingly, so is the way audiences perceive it.
Delirious Phenomena by Alyssa Weinberg
That idea is central to her upcoming album, Pieces of Light, a collection of solo and multitracked cello pieces set for release October 2. The first single from the album was recently released, offering listeners an introduction to a project deeply inspired by the work of artist James Turrell.
Weinberg first encountered Turrell’s work at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, where an exhibition of his work immediately captured her attention. Turrell’s exploration of light, space and perception became the inspiration for Pieces of Light.
“I was so mesmerized and drawn in by that experience and decided to write this album,” Weinberg said.
The album explores the parallels between Turrell’s manipulation of light and her own exploration of sonic perception.
ultraviolet performed by Gabriel Cabezas from the album Pieces of Light
“The album is almost an obsessive meditation to find all these parallels between the way that Turrell would play with light and perception in the same way that I would play perception in sonic properties,” she said.
For Weinberg, the connection between light and sound is more than an artistic metaphor. Both are intangible forces that nevertheless shape the way people experience the world.
“Both light and sound are two things that you can’t define or hold in your hand in any concrete way, yet they are a part of our experience,” she said.
That connection makes Weinberg particularly excited about one of her new surroundings on the Forty Acres: Skyspace, the permanent public artwork by Turrell located on The University of Texas at Austin campus. After discovering Turrell’s work through the museum exhibition, Weinberg now finds herself working just steps away from one of his installations.
The album will be released by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which recently launched its own record label. For Weinberg, the project brings together many of the ideas that have shaped her artistic practice: sound, perception, light and the experience of encountering art.
If you would like to hear her work live, her piece If I were, when I was will be performed by Butler's New Music Ensemble on April 14, 2027, at 7:30 p.m.; admission is free.