Author: cory

I tried to write a song that sounded like those old happy, sunny ’70s songs that were way too happy and way too bouncy.

Only a tremendously generous musician could carry this off without becoming hostage to his own genius.

One is continually astounded that Cullinan can pack his hour-long disc so full of the most diverse music: from folk to classical, from the urban grit of rap to the natural world of birdsong, serving up the funkiest soul food sandwich served up in the history of recorded sound.

While Pickett pursued conducting, Cullinan turned his attention to composing, and not just classical music.Cullinan also wrote, performed and recorded pop and rock music.“I was really impressed by Cory’s music,” Pickett said. “I said to him, “When I have an orchestra, I want you to do a piece for me,” and he said, kind of flippantly, “Well, talk to me when you have an orchestra.” The two kept in touch, and the opportunity for Cullinan to write something for Pickett to conduct did come about through a mutual goal.

A scurrilous rock anthem…  a savage send-up of monotheism’s favorite destination resort that no one wants to go to until death hands them that final one-way ticket… animated by constant eruptions of molten creativity.

2025 Alive is a cutting-edge, innovative musical and visual experience… a deeply expressive, multigenerational multimedia collaboration. The avant-garde piece is performed by renowned singer-songwriter Riley Max, and the accompanying film — a vivid cinematic dreamscape — was directed by his daughter, Sidney Cullinan.

The ambient sounds are lush, shimmering, and alive (the recording and mixing on this makes for a fully immersive listening experience), reminding you of the sheer amount of life and biodiversity that exists on this wonderful planet.

Footprint was originally conceived by Cory Cullinan as an undergrad at Stanford University in the late 1980s taking famed composer and electronic music legend John Chowning’s 220A course. He started working on it only to find it was too time-consuming for his undergraduate course load — at the time, digital audio workstations didn’t exist, and creating all the field recordings and somehow putting them together in a multitrack mix would’ve taken months or years of work. So he never finished it. But he always wanted to.

As an audio piece, it was premiered to Cory’s Recording Arts students at Stanford in the summer of 2024. When surveyed as to what the piece was about and its message, the students fell into three distinct groups with different but strongly specific answers. This is exactly what the composer had hoped — an immersive emotional experience, yet one open to intellectual interpretation based on your own experience.

Fascinating new art and noise piece…