Chicago-based composer and musician Ephraim Champion’s music has been lauded as “strongly individual,” “compelling,” and “distinctive” (Chicago Classical Review). His work spans stage and screen, with highlights including Scenes from South Shore, Chicago (premiered by Gaudete Brass at the 2021 Ear Taxi Music Festival) and Humanhood (premiered by Constellation Men’s Ensemble, 2022). As the 2023 Hearing in Color/La Caccina Young Composer-in-Residence, he composed All Things Sublime and Colossal for the virtuosic women’s vocal ensemble, La Caccina, and A Stone of Hope (Martin’s Song) for the Music Institute of Chicago, featuring the talents of multi-Grammy nominated pianist, Marta Aznavoorian.
Champion’s international presence is growing. His Suite for the F Horn & Tenor Saxophone premiered at the 2023 World Saxophone Congress (Spain), followed by The Spectacle (commissioned by The Yamaha Tuba Duo) in Fukuoka, Japan (2024). April 2025 marked the debut of Ephraim’s significant first foray into larger ensemble writing with the Chicago Composers Orchestra’s premiere of Sonder & Ozurie, a Symphonic Sketch for Chamber Orchestra. In August of 2025, Ephraim’s piece, Vicariously Through You, was released by Neuma Records as part of the Project Encore, Vol. 2 album, commissioned by world-renowned and Grammy-winning classical saxophonist, Timothy McAllister.
An accomplished film composer as well, in 2023, Ephraim joined Slightly American Productions as their composer-in-residence, scoring Girls in the Back of the Club and Rejection is God’s Protection. Other IMDB credits include My Darling, Look At Me!, produced by A2C Entertainment and Repugnant Riddles Productions, and a feature-length documentary entitled Living Beneath Las Vegas, produced by Southwest Film Productions and set to release early 2026.
Beyond music, Ephraim enjoys writing, film, and time with his wife, Kianti, and their two yorkies, Heath and Ginger.
We create for us in hopes it’s not just for us.
Creatively, I like to describe myself as a storyteller and experience-creator through music.
“Storyteller” because I recognize that stories keep the world going around. Whether they are true or not doesn’t matter. Stories are what keep people interested. Stories are what keep me interested. Stories pull you in. You get attached, you get an experience, you leave the ordinary world (even if just for a second.) I’m drawn to stories, and I try to tell them through whatever medium of my choosing, whether through music or words (or both). I think music can bring the emotion to a story like nothing else.
And that’s where the “experience-creator” part comes in. I want to paint vivid pictures in the audience’s mind and create experiences, demonstrating the power music has to transcend. I want the listeners to forget where they are, why they’re there, and whether or not they took the meat out of the freezer. I have no interest in composing something that does nothing. I want it to have an IMPACT, and I want to reach as many people as I can.
And that’s been the case with all my collaborators. I think the beautiful thing about creativity is that we do the work for us in hopes that’s it’s not just for us.
And a quick note on collaboration: I see composing as a very collaborative process.
I understand that the moment I take the music out of my head, put it on the page, and send it to the musicians or director, I’m the one who’s usually wrong. And I cherish those moments, the moments where I don’t have to be right. Because I’m not. All I care about is having the art reach its max potential to increase its impact, and I’m smart enough to know I can’t do that alone.
The world needs the light creativity will provide. I feel like everyone is miserable, and no one believes in themselves anymore.
Let’s give them a reason.
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