Columbia, MO – After considering the largest number of applicants yet in the event’s four-year history, the University of Missouri School of Music and the Mizzou New Music Initiative today announced the eight resident composers selected for next year’s Mizzou International Composers Festival.

Formerly known as the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, the 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF) will take place Monday, July 22 through Saturday, July 27 in Columbia. The resident composers were chosen through a portfolio application process that this year attracted 158 entries from across the USA and around the world, a new record for the event. Listed with their current places of residence, the selected composers are:

* Jason Thorpe Buchanan – Rochester, NY
* Ryan Chase – Bloomington, IN
* Andrew Davis – Austin, TX
* Eric Guinivan – Los Angeles, CA
* Elizabeth Kelly – Rochester, NY
* Wei-Chieh Lin – New York, NY
* Greg Simon – Ann Arbor, MI
* David Witter – Columbia, MO

As another indicator of its growing prestige and recognition both here and abroad, the 2013 MICF also attracted an event-record number of applications from outside the United States, including Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Greece, Israel, Italy, Republic of Korea, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Three of the eight composers selected have significant international ties. Wei-Chieh Lin was born in Taiwan; Elizabeth Kelly studied at the The Hague Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands; and Jason Thorpe Buchanan spent 2010-2011 living in Hamburg, Germany as a visiting scholar with a Fulbright Fellowship at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

The University of Missouri is represented by David Witter, who recently earned a master’s degree in composition from Mizzou and is the winner of the 2013 Sinquefield Composition Prize.

The 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival will include a series of public concerts featuring music from the resident composers and other contemporary creators, as well as workshops, master classes, and other events.

The Festival’s guest composers for 2013 will be Augusta Read Thomas , University Professor of composition at the University of Chicago and past composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and Daniel Kellogg , an assistant professor of composition at the University of Colorado who has been called “one of the most exciting composers around” by the Washington Post.

The acclaimed new music group Alarm Will Sound, conducted by artistic director Alan Pierson, once again will serve as resident ensemble, as they have since the Festival began in 2010.

During the festival, the eight resident composers will receive composition lessons from Thomas and Kellogg; take part in rehearsals with Alarm Will Sound; give public presentations on their music; and receive a premiere performance and professional live recording of a new work created specifically for the Festival and Alarm Will Sound.

A complete schedule of events, times, dates and venues for the 2013 Mizzou International Composers Festival will be announced at a later date. For more information, please visit http://composersfestival.missouri.edu/.

Jason Thorpe Buchanan

Ryan Chase

Andrew Davis

Eric Guinivan

Elizabeth Kelly

Wei-Chieh Lin

Greg Simon

David Witter