Edward Hamel

Department Chair

Edward Hamel is a Mexican-American composer, mastering engineer, musician and educator from Chicago. He graduated magna cum laude from The University of California San Diego and Columbia College Chicago.

As a composer, he has been awarded international commissions from organizations such as the MATA Festival, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Venice Biennale and The New York Youth Symphony. His works Gray Neon Life can be heard on asinglewordisnotenough from Seth Parker Woods (Confront Recordings) and Pull the Name from My Tongue on script-rescript from Rachel Beetz (Populist Records.) He has been fortunate to have musicians/ensembles premiere his work throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

As a mastering engineer, Edward's goal is to provide artists and labels the best quality work within their project's budget. From his background as a musician and composer, experience as a devoted educator and a record label owner, he approaches each project with a level of empathy, attentiveness and professionalism. Edward has worked on projects for Zeromoon, No Rent Records, Longform Editions, Unifactor, Husky Pants, SCRIPTS Records, Kettle Hole Records, the Re:sound Festival, the Seattle Symphony, and countless artists of varying genres. Furthermore, he is a co-founder of the Chicago-based label SCRIPTS Records. The label's focus is to produce, promote and archive music taking influence from contemporary concert music, noise, ambient and electronic composition.

As a musician, Edward is the leading member of the group ONLY. Collaborating with evolving musicians, ONLY's music has a foundation of lyrically delicate, lush, enigmatic songwriting combined with elements of heavy shoegaze, post-rock and dark ambient textures. He is also the drummer of heavy music group End It All.