Written by Walt West | October 4th, 2026
I’ve known Noah for a while now, so I have a slightly different perspective on his music than someone discovering him for the first time. What has always stood out to me is how much thought he puts into composition. He’s not just interested in making something that sounds good. He’s interested in understanding how small ideas can grow, interact, and eventually become something much larger.
That probably explains why "Welcome to Loch Raven" is music to my ears.
Noah is self-described as a post-minimalist composer, drawing inspiration from greats like Philip Glass and Yann Tiersen. For the "NON" music nerds, that means a fascination with simple musical ideas, repetition, evolving textures, and unconventional rhythmic structures. For everyone else, the easiest way to put it is: Noah likes taking something simple and seeing how far he can push it.
"Welcome to Loch Raven" takes that idea somewhere very interesting.
The seven-track ambient piano album was built around field recordings captured at Loch Raven Reservoir in Baltimore County, Maryland. But Noah wasn't interested in simply recording some birds, water, or people and putting those sounds underneath a piano track. Instead, he treated the environment as part of the composition itself. He would set up a Zoom H4N Pro recorder and sensitive lapel microphones on a tripod, walk away, and let the reservoir do what it does. Later, he would sit with those recordings and begin finding melodies and rhythms that matched what he heard.
To put it another way, the music wasn't completely written and then brought to the environment. The environment helped write the music.
That approach came at an interesting point in Noah's development as a composer. The year before, he had spent hundreds of hours writing, recording, and producing “Epiphany”, his first symphony. He was proud of the finished project, but by the time it was released, he was completely burnt out. So instead of immediately taking on another massive undertaking, he decided to have some fun. He dusted off an old handheld recorder from a friend, bought a decent microphone and tripod, and started recording.
Sometimes stepping away from the big project is exactly what opens the door to something new.
Without a doubt, one of the best examples of that came completely by accident. During the final track, Noah captured two kids running around and playing. It wasn't planned. They weren't part of the composition. They were simply there. Rather than treating the recording as a mistake, Noah recognized what it gave the piece. That moment brought a little unpredictability and life into a project that was carefully constructed. It's the kind of detail that can't really be composed into existence. It's RAW Life.
You just have to be there when it happens.
That may be the most interesting thing about "Welcome to Loch Raven". For a guy who spends so much time thinking about structure (trust me, Noah is that guy!), the project leaves room for things he can't control.
There is plenty of structure in the music itself. The compositions can begin with remarkably simple ideas before becoming rhythmically dense and melodically intricate. His influences begin to make sense when you hear him describe that process. Although you can feel Glass and Tiersen, Noah developed his own version of the approach these legends applied.
His journey into music started back in middle school when he joined choir, he was introduced to music theory, vocal technique, and the experience of making music as part of a group. Around the same time, his parents got him his first piano. Noah had always thought music would remain something he loved rather than something he would build a career around. When he entered college, he was actually a computer science major with a music minor, intending to pursue software development. But while attending Roanoke College, he continued performing with the choir and began working seriously on composition. After meeting professors Dr. Jeffrey Sandborg and Dr. Gordon Marsh, he was pushed further into the world of composition.
Music stopped being the thing he did alongside computer science and became the career he actually wanted.
Nowadays, Noah is looking toward another side of the music business: sync licensing. He sees the ideal fit between his style and film, television, commercials, and he's moving in that direction. This all makes sense when you listen to "Welcome to Loch Raven". The music has room to exist alongside something else. It creates atmosphere without everything else disappearing. It can be something you sit down and actively experience, or something that quietly changes the space/mood around you.
And actually, Loch Raven may not be finished with Noah just yet. If the album performs well he has plans to return to the reservoir for more action, potentially as part of a deluxe edition. And he's planning something even more seasonal for this winter: an alternate version of the album.
Which, feels like the perfect next step. For someone who spent years learning how to construct music, Noah seems to be increasingly interested in another skill: listening. And sometimes the best thing a professional composer can do is step away the piano, the equipment, and let the universe make the first move.