Making Missouri a major center for the music of tomorrow

Composer Nina C. Young will visit Mizzou at the end of this month to coach the Mizzou New Music Ensemble and give a pre-concert talk before a performance of one of her works.

Young (pictured), who is an assistant professor of composition and director of the electronic music studios at the University of Texas at Austin and a visiting composer at the Peabody Institute, will be in Columbia starting Friday, November 30.

She’ll spend some time during the day on Friday working with the Ensemble, which will perform her composition “Rising Tide” as part of their concert on Sunday, December 2 at Whitmore Recital Hall.

Then on Friday evening, Young will present a pre-concert talk starting at 7:00 p.m. before the Mizzou Electronic Music Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at the A.P. Green Chapel. The showcase will include a performance of Young’s piece “Sun Propeller” by violinist and MU faculty member Julie Rosenfeld.

Born and raised in Rockland County, NY, just outside New York City, Young earned degrees from McGill University in Montreal and from Massachusetts Institute of Technology before getting her DMA at Columbia University. Her music draws on a variety of influences, from classical to minimalism to pop and more, frequently combining electronics and conventional acoustic instruments.

Young’s works have been performed by ensembles including the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, JACK Quartet, Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others. She also is co-artistic director of the New York-based new music group Ensemble Échappé. Her honors include the 2015-16 Rome Prize, a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Award.

Her interests in recent years have expanded to include collaborative, multidisciplinary works such as “Temenos,” a site-specific piece involving music, ballet, and the architecture of the Tempietto Del Bramante in Rome; and “Out of whose womb came the ice,” a work “commenting on the ill-fated Ernest Shackleton Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914-17,” written for baritone, orchestra, electronics, and generative video and premiered in 2017 by the American Composers Orchestra Underground.

The School of Music and the Mizzou New Music Initiative will welcome composer Andrew List to Columbia for a residency next Thursday, October 25 and Friday, October 26.

While he’s on campus, List, who’s a professor of composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston, will make a presentation on his music; give private composition lessons; and work with the University’s Percussion Ensemble, which will perform his work “Night Wanderings” as part of the “Percussion Extravaganza” concert on Thursday night at the Missouri Theatre.

A longtime Bostonian, List (pictured) earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the New England Conservatory and his doctorate in composition at Boston University. He writes music for a variety of instrumentations and genres, including works for orchestra, string quartet, soloists, and various chamber ensembles, as well as vocal and choral music, opera, and music for children.

He has received commissions and performances from many ensembles and soloists in North and South America and in Europe, including the Boston Classical Orchestra, Zodiac Trio, Alea III, Esterhazy Quartet, Interensemble, Kalistos Chamber Orchestra, North-South Consonance, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, Concordia String Trio, Turtle Island String Quartet, pianists George Lopez and Winston Choi, cellist Emmanuel Feldman, and soprano Lisa Saffer.

Recordings of his music include releases by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Eva Szekely as violin soloist, on the Albany label; by MONTAGE Music Society on MSR Classics; and Zodiac Trio on Blue Griffin.

List has won numerous awards and honors, and is the composer-in-residence at the Zodiac Music Academy and Festival in Valdeblor, Côte d’Azur, France, where he presents a composition class each summer. He also was the first American ever to serve as a composer-in-residence for the city of Amsterdam. Sponsored by the city, the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst foundation, and the American Embassy in The Hague, he spent eight months there presenting concerts of his music and that of other American composers, as well as lectures and workshops at major conservatories throughout the Netherlands.

Dustin Dunn’s composition “In the Shadow of Shepherd Mountain” has been selected as the winner of the 2018 UMSL Young Composers Competition (Wind Ensemble, division 2).

The work will be premiered by the UMSL Wind Ensemble as part of a concert at 7:30 p.m.  Wednesday, October 17 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

Dunn (pictured), a senior from Annapolis, Missouri, is attending Mizzou on a full Sinquefield Scholarship from the Mizzou New Music Initiative.

He previously has received awards for his music from the Music Teachers National Association and the Missouri Composers Project, and was one of three Mizzou composers chosen last year to have his work read by musicians from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

You can read more about Dustin Dunn in the feature about him published in 2015 in Mizzou magazine.

The Mizzou New Music Initiative is most grateful to Robert Morris for agreeing to serve as one of the two distinguished guest composers at the 2018 Mizzou International Composers Festival.

Morris, a composer and professor at Eastman School of Music, graciously re-arranged his summer schedule on short notice to come to Columbia after composer Chen Yi had to withdraw for medical reasons.

Festival-goers will be able to hear two of Morris’ works during the MICF.  As part of their concert on Thursday night at the Missouri Theatre, resident ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform Morris’ “In Concert,” and Friday’s “Mizzou New Music” concert will include his electronic piece “Mountain Streams.”

While at the festival, Morris also will give a public presentation about his music; teach the seven resident composers in individual and group sessions; and consult with Alarm Will Sound on their performance of his music.

Morris was born in Cheltenham, England and received his musical education at the Eastman School and at the University of Michigan, where he earned his masters and doctoral degrees in composition and ethnomusicology.

He has taught at Eastman since 1980, serving as chair of the composition department from 1999 to 2005 and again from 2008 to 2011. Before his appointment at Eastman, Morris taught composition, electronic music, and music theory at the University of Hawaii; at Yale University, where he was chairman of the composition department and director of the Yale Electronic Music Studio; and at the University of Pittsburgh, where he directed the Computer and Electronic Studio.

Morris has composed more than 160 musical works, which have been performed in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and recorded on labels including CRI, New World, Music Gallery Editions, Neuma, Music and Arts, Fanfare, Centaur, Open Space, Innova, Yank Gulch, Albany, and Attacca.

In addition to his music and teaching, Morris has written four books and more than 50 articles and reviews on subjects including musical analysis and aesthetics; compositional design; electronic and computer music; the Carnatic music of south India; and more.

He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the A. Whitney Griswold Foundation, the American Music Center, the Hanson Institute of American Music, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In 1975 he was a MacDowell Colony fellow, and in 2008, a Djerassi artist.

Morris has been guest composer at many festivals and series of new music, including the ISCM Festival of Contemporary Music,  International Conferences of Computer Music, Composer to Composer, Composer’s Symposium, Kobe International Modern Music Festival, Heidelberg Contemporary Music Festival, Western Illinois University New Music Festival, Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology,  MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music’s  New Music Festival, New Music on the Point, University of South Florida at Tampa New Music Festival, and more.

He has received numerous awards and commissions from organizations and ensembles including the Pittsburgh Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Yale University, Speculum Musicae, Brave New Works, JACK Quartet, Momenta String Quartet, The Society for New Music, Alienor Harpsichord Society, Hartt College Festival of Contemporary Organ Music, National Flute Association, and more.

For more about Robert Morris, read the interview with him published in 2010 by New Music Box, and watch a video in which he discusses his work SOUND/PATH/FIELD, one of series of works inspired by his enjoyment of hiking that are intended to be performed outdoors. You can hear some samples of Robert Morris’ music in the embedded players below.

“Mysterious Landscape [excerpt],” recorded live by Robert Morris at Eastman School of Music’s Hatch Recital Hall.

“Entelechy 2012” (version p100g250) for piano with electronic modification

“Still,” performed by Solungga Fang-Tzu Liu (piano)

“Oracle,” performed in March 2011 at Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa, FL by the University of South Florida New-Music Consortium, conducted by Baljinder Sekhon