Composer Robert Sirota will discuss his new work “Three Nocturnes” in a pre-concert talk before Alarm Will Sound’s world premiere performance of it for the Mizzou International Composers Festival on Thursday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre. Sirota’s talk will begin at 7:00 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:30 p.m.

Sirota (pictured) will be joined by artist Simon Dinnerstein, whose drawings “Night,” “Night Scene I,” and “Purple Haze” provided inspiration for “Three Nocturnes”; and Alex Barker, director of Mizzou’s Museum of Art & Archaeology, where the exhibition “The Lasting World – Simon Dinnerstein and the Fulbright Triptych” will be presented starting July 25 through December 22.

A native New Yorker who now splits his time between New York City and Maine, Robert Sirota has been called “a quintessentially American composer” by ClassicalLite. Over the past 40 years, his chamber, orchestral, and liturgical works have been performed all over the world, and he has been the recipient of numerous awards, honors and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, and many others.

As a teacher, he served as director of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, chairman of the department of music and performing arts professions at New York University, director of Boston University’s school of music, and from 2005 to 2012, president of Manhattan School of Music. Sirota’s “Three Nocturnes” was commissioned by Alarm Will Sound specifically for the Mizzou International Composers Festival.

Admission to the pre-concert talk is included in the ticket price for the concert. Single tickets for all Mizzou International Composers Festival concerts are priced at $18 for adults, $10 for students. Tickets can be charged by phone using Visa, MasterCard or Discover by calling 1-573-882-3781. To buy tickets online, visit http://composersfestival.missouri.edu/.