As a composer, McIntosh strives to write vibrant and compelling pieces while bringing a spirit of experimentalism to the music, usually through working with just intonation and frequency ratios. He finds that major influences on his creations come from literature, visual art, early music, physics, and the Nevada desert. His compositions have been performed around the US and Europe in venues such as REDCAT in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Utrecht, Netherlands), Hamburger Klangwerktage (Germany), Schijnheilig (Amsterdam), the Dartington International Summer Festival (England), 7 hours (Berlin), Complice (Berlin), Unruly Music (Milwaukee), SoundOn Festival (San Diego), Gridlock (Vancouver, BC), Sound in Space Festival (Los Angeles), the Wulf (Los Angeles), and Radio 4 (Netherlands). He was awarded First Honorable Mention (2nd prize) in the Gaudeamus International Composition Competition 2011.
Also a frequent performer as both violinist and violist, McIntosh is known for being an avid advocate of experimental music, although he often performs compositions from throughout the last 800 years, sometimes on period instruments as well. McIntosh is a member of the Formalist Quartet, which is also dedicated to adventurous and relevant repertoire and regularly performs around the states. He holds degrees in violin and composition from the University of Nevada, Reno and the California Institute of the Arts. As a chamber musician he has played in festivals, concerts, art spaces, and recordings around the US and Europe with the Formalist Quartet, Tholl/McIntosh duo, Dante Boon, Quatuor Bozzini (Montreal), Rohan de Saram, inauthentica, and Wet Ink Ensemble (New York). He has performed on concert series such as Other Minds (San Francisco), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Dilijan (Los Angeles), MOSA Concerts (New York), DNK Amsterdam, and MicroFest (Los Angeles).
As a solo artist he has appeared at venues such as Stanford University, REDCAT, the Wulf, Hamburger Klangwerktage (Germany), Schijnheilig (Amsterdam), Pianola Museum (Amsterdam), Unruly Music, UC San Diego, Pomona College, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and KPFK Pacifica Radio. He also was the viola soloist in 2010 for the US premiere of Gerard Grisey's Les Espaces Acoustiques, for which performance the Los Angeles Times said he "played with commanding beauty". He finds that another important source of learning and inspiration for his composing comes from working as a performer with living composers. Composers with whom he has worked personally include Marc Sabat, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Samuel Vriezen, Helmut Lachenmann, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Tom Johnson, Jurg Frey, Roger Reynolds, Juan Cristobal Cerrillo, Arthur Jarvinen, Wadada Leo Smith, and many others.
A native of rural Northern Nevada, McIntosh is currently based in the Los Angeles area where he enjoys a large and frequently unexpected variety of performing, recording, teaching, and composing activities.