Bio
Hello, my name is Alex. Below I talk about myself in the third person...
Alex Sramek is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach, where he earned Bachelor's's' degrees in Computer Science and Music Composition.
Alex has studied composition with Martin Herman, Justus Matthews, Carolyn Bremer, and Robin Cox, and was awarded the Paul Lindsey III Composition and Don Andrus Electronic Music scholarships. May 2007 signaled Alex's international premiere when, at the invitation of Maestro Sergei Proskourin, he traveled to Kursk to conduct the Russian Chamber Orchestra for the world premiere of Castleventure, a piece written for that ensemble. In addition to the media-frenzy Russian tour, Alex's music has been performed in Long Beach, Long Beach, and Long Beach (one time they even charged admission!), as well as in unpublicized out-of-the-way rooms in Laguna Niguel and Los Angeles. He would have had more wide-reaching performances, but his pieces tend to get enormous and are compounded by a significant measure of procrastination. A postmodernist (not to be confused with the hyphenated post-modernist sort) composer, he likes to write music containing obnoxious noises at inappropriate times. Please don't give the composer any ideas... he's begun work on a concerto for Contrabassoon, and intends to proceed to write concerti for Eb Clarinet, Piccolo, and Glockenspiel in the not-ludicrously-distant future.
Alex is also a highly accomplished clarinetist (Eb, Bb, A, Bass), recently performing with the Los Angeles Clarinet Choir and making plans for an ensemble of his own. Prior to his college graduation and subsequent violent ejection from all performing activities thereof, he performed with various ensembles in the greater California State University, Long Beach area. He was a section clarinetist in the CSULB Wind Symphony, with which he performed in (in order of impressiveness) England, Wales, Salt Lake City, Reno, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Orange, and, of course, Long Beach. Additional ensembles include the CSULB University Wind Quintet, CSULB Symphony Orchestra, CSULB New Music Ensemble, CSULB Clarinet Choir, CSULB Pyramid Quintet, CSULB Symphonic Band, and CSULB Studio Orchestra. Alex has premiered works for solo clarinet by Beata Brandt and Grace Joung, and has performed in chamber ensemble premieres of works by Edward Cansino, Seth Shafer, Greg Schneider, Luke Hannington, Alex Sadnik, Todd Williams, Brent Pierce, and Chad Skopp. Additionally, Alex has performed solo and ensemble repertoire at the Claremont Clarinet Festival.
But wait, there's more!
As stated above, Alex was also a computer science major. In between his wide and varied musical career, Alex interned for three years at Quicksilver Software, Inc., programming computer games. He was named the Outstanding Baccalaureate Graduate of the CSULB Computer Science department (he now realizes he should have mentioned this earlier). He has competed at the ACM Regional Programming Contest three times, served a year as Associated Students Senator for Engineering, and was Head of Software for the CSULB MicroMouse Robotics Team.
Alex is currently employed as a software engineer and network administrator at Quicksilver Software Inc., where he works with a bunch of great people. He has been living in this so-called "real world" outside academia for the better part of two years, and is currently in a torturous limbo, awaiting results of graduate school applications. In the near future, he will either be pursuing a graduate degree or starting ensembles to perform music that makes the word "eclectic" sound like... well... like something not very eclectic at all!