Gabriel Novak

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 explores the interplay of improvisation, groove, and form; the subversion and confirmation of aural expectation; and the elision of structural complexity with soaring melody and intricate harmony. Central to his recent work is a balance between nostalgia and novelty, embedding the unfamiliar within the familiar to indulge a listener’s expectations while drawing them somewhere new.

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 as a Featured Composer Finalist for its EarShot Readings. Novak’s work as a songwriter and producer includes Bella Fleur’s 2026 debut album, Malevolent Love. He completed his PhD in Music Composition at the University of Chicago, where he studied with Augusta Read Thomas.

Prior to joining Central Washington University, Novak taught composition, music theory, improvisation, and electronic music at Reed College, 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 an expansive range of musical traditions and repertoires—whether the Delta blues, jazz and the American songbook, psychedelic soul, or the occasional hyperpop fever dream.