Baker Artist Portfolios

In the past, composers were free to write different kinds of music. Operas are drastically different from string quartets or piano works. These days musicians are often expected to write music under a genre or style, and hopping around is looked down upon. But different purposes, situations, and collaborators will necessitate having different approaches and output. Stephen Santillan has a wide variety of solo and collaborative projects, but believes they are all related. Creative endeavors when worked on a deep level will pull it closer to a creative core. A pop song left at the surface level will stay at the surface level as a pop song, and a soundtrack left at the surface level will also stay at the surface level as a soundtrack. Both of those things will remain unrelated, but if both are approached with full intention and spirit, they will be pulled closer to the creative core of their creator giving them a voice that will be related, without feeling eclectic.  

Stephen Santillan is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who was born in Quezon City, Philippines. Over the years, he has contributed to many different musical projects, locally and abroad. He has a handful of long time collaborators, some of whom he  has been working with for over 20 years. These projects have allowed him to tour throughout the United States and Europe. One collaborative project was awarded a grant through the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, which allowed him to hire students from the Peabody Institute to perform a song cycle written for an art opening.  Outside of these works, he has had a variety of solo projects and have also written music for film, theater and dance productions, art installations, and have been a member of live DIY theater ensembles. In 2019  he was a Baker Awards music finalist.

His solo works are partially inspired by a visual idea, which makes sense because he started out as a visual artist before switching go music after high school.

His first solo project, Ghost Life, was an ensemble of people playing mostly small percussion. Inspired by east asian ensemble, he built short red percussion tables for the performances, one for the left side of the stage and one for the right. A concept behind this project was also the rejection of modern practices where a performer can envelop a whole room with sound with a push of a single button. Having each performer play only little staccato sounds allow space to exist between all the shifting patterns of rhythm.

Another project that also rebelled against a modern tendencies was Ceremony Drum. This project was more pop oriented in sound and was inspired by the public infatuation with singers and front persons. Conceived as a pop band in the dark, the idea was to have the drummer’s hand, who played standing up in the front, to be the only lit element of the group. The rest of the group, including the vocalist would be in the back, in the dark, and only the repetitive motion of the drummer's hand would take center stage.

After Ceremony Drum he switched to playing solo under the title “Sunset At Owl’s Head.” Inspired by east asian street musicians with guitars and drum machines, he utilized backing tracks drenched in the dissonance of modern twentieth century classical music, and the lushness of Bollywood soundtrack scores, along with rhythmic elements of small percussion, as a continuation from Ghost Life. Through the use of backing tracks he was able to vary the timbres and could combine different unrelated elements that would be impractical in normal settings.

But his most recent performances of solo music is under the name Double Spectre in which he plays two keyboards, which are slightly out of tune with each other. Using two keyboards allow him to play the same note in two different tunings and for this he had to find a more personal language. The music is sparse and the performances are set up like an intimate theater piece. Performed with his back to the audience and just a single light source, it is a visual analogue to the intimacy of finding that language.

These projects are all set up to be theater pieces without dialogue or story lines. The drama that occurs on stage is intrinsic to the set up, so there are no superfluous actions.

His current project “Bell and Bass” is even more of an idiosyncratic theater piece. The language he has come to find in Double Spectre continues to develop, but he also has not abandoned the more conventional way of writing music. “Bell and Bass” is an attempt to reconcile the two, not by merging it into a singular entity, but by performing an interleaved structure based on a current Double Spectre piece “We Met At The Same Time” and some newer songs written for Ceremony Drum. The intentional theatrically of this performance is even more direct as it starts with a video. With performers on stage, the first minute and a half of the video starts and there is no sound whatsoever, just patterns of images slowly quickening. When the quickening patterns come to the it’s final realization, the moving video starts along with a drum machine and an asymmetrical loop pattern. This goes on for another 2 minutes while the performers still do not play. When the performers finally do come in, the video image goes away, and when the video image comes back in, the players cease to play. This is an attempt to create a music structure that is based on both the visual, as well as the musical elements. There is a further structural stacking as well through the entrance of two separate ensembles onto the existing drum machine and loop pattern. The first group of players to come in make up the Ceremony Drum group, while the later performers to come in are the flute and clarinet that make up the main elements of the Double Spectre piece. So in this performance, the first segment of this performance is structured on three elements: the visual element, the Ceremony Drum pop group, and the flute and clarinet of  the Double Spectre ensemble. When this superstructure comes to an end, it continues into the first section of “We Met At The Same Time” which starts off with just flute and clarinet. Between movements of “We Met At The Same Time” Ceremony Drum picks up and performs songs with some transitional elements. This continues through the structure of “We Met At The Same Time” and the whole performance ends with the final movement of that piece. This is Stephen Santillan’s project that he is currently working on and hopes to perform in 2026.

Meanwhile he continues to live and work in Baltimore, with his partner and long time collaborators, Wheatie Mattiasich. In 2023 they released a collaborative record, under her name titled “Old Glow” which was spotlighted on NPR. He is also currently finishing up some recordings with a newer project with old collaborators, Jeff Mcgrath and Emmanuel Nicolaidis, AM Tango.