Electric Kompany is an American band that was formed by Kevin R. Gallagher

Kevin R. Gallagher

Kevin R. Gallagher is a guitarist who has achieved success with both the electric guitar and the classical guitar. As a classical guitarist, has received top honors at some of the most prestigious guitar competitions in the world, including the 1993 Guitar Foundation of America, the 1994 American...

. By exploring, arranging, and commissioning music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 for guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, keyboard

Electronic keyboard

An electronic keyboard is an electronic or digital keyboard instrument.The major components of a typical modern electronic keyboard are:...

, drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, and bass

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

, the group mixes classical and rock music in a genre that has been described as Art rock

Art rock

Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...

, Experimental Music

Experimental music

Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

, Avant-Progressive, or Avant-Rock. Electric Kompany has performed in the New York City area and was one of the featured bands at Full Force: The New Rock Complexity, a festival curated by Gallagher and John Zorn

John Zorn

John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...

.

Current members

• Kevin R. Gallagher - guitar
• Alex Walker - bass
• James Johnston - keyboard
• Eric Poland - drums

History

Electric Kompany was founded by Kevin R. Gallagher, a guitarist who spent much of his career as a competition-winning classical guitarist who performed all around the world. In 2001, Gallagher began improvising and arranging music for electric guitar from composers such as J.S. Bach and Rob Haskins and soon began holding auditions for the group that would become Electric Kompany. His mission was to launch a group that combined the classical and popular music worlds. "I can't say there were any obvious influences for the group," says Gallagher. "It's just me coming to terms with who I am - a mix of a classical and rock musician. I can perform rock music or classical music fluently, but I never felt totally satisfied in either world."

Since Electric Kompany began performing, they have arranged music by Nick Didkovsky

Nick Didkovsky

Nick Didkovsky is a composer, guitarist, computer music programmer, and leader of the band Doctor Nerve. He is a former student of Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros and Gerald Shapiro....

, Marc Mellits

Marc Mellits

Marc Mellits is an American composer and musician.Mellits was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied at the Eastman School of Music from 1984 to 1988, the Yale School of Music from 1989 to 1991, Cornell University from 1991 to 1996, and at Tanglewood in the summer of 1997...

, and Jacob Ter Veldhuis

Jacob ter Veldhuis

Jacob ter Veldhuis, also known as Jacob TV, is a Dutch avant-garde classical composer. Ter Veldhuis favors tonal, melodic compositions, avoiding the dissonance of some recent classical music. Many of his works build melodies around samples of the human voice, as in Steve Reich's composition...

, and have commissioned music by David Laganella

David Laganella

David Laganella is an American composer based in Philadelphia. Laganella studied Guitar and Jazz at Berklee School of Music then pursued music composition degrees from New York University and the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in music composition at the age of 27.His music...

 and Kristen Hevner. They have a performance schedule that includes many concerts in the New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 area and have been a featured band at Full Force: The New Rock Complexity.

Mission statement

The mission statement of Electric Kompany states that "at this time in music history, composers are freely combining Avant-garde and American popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

aesthetics. This new 'Avant - Pop' music is daring, exciting, even shocking. However, most composers are writing this 'new' music for 'old' instruments. As beautiful as these kinds of pieces are, there still is a tremendous lack of 'modern music' written for 'modern instruments' - in our case - the electric guitar, keyboards, drum set, and electric bass. This seems to be the next logical step in music evolution and is the main reason for the formation of the rock quartet, Electric Kompany."