Gabriel Novak
Visiting Assistant Professor of Music
gnovak@reed.edu
Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2025
B.M. Cleveland Institute of Music, 2018
Gabriel Novak is a composer, performer, and educator whose work bridges jazz, blues, rock, and American vernacular traditions with classical and contemporary sounds. His music is characterized by the interplay of improvisation, groove, and form, the balance of subverting and confirming aural expectation, structural complexity, soaring melody embedded in intricate harmony, and the ability to invoke emotional immediacy, engaging both performers and listeners alike. Recent projects include Calapitter for The Grossman Ensemble, Spur for Axiom Brass, and languor | torpor for Quatuor Diotima. In 2025, Novak was awarded the Charles Ives Scholarship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received a commission from the American Composers Orchestra for their EarShot Readings, with a premiere slated for September 2025. He completed his PhD in Music Composition at the University of Chicago, where he studied with Augusta Read Thomas. Prior to joining Reed, he taught composition, music theory, jazz, pop, and electronic music at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Chicago. His teaching emphasizes the integration of theoretical ideas with students’ tangible, creative practices and draws from a wide range of musical traditions and repertoires—whether it be the Delta blues, American songbook, psychedelic soul, or the occasional hyperpop fever dream.