Coming from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, Ted Goldman should see at least a few familiar faces when he arrives in Columbia to serve as one of the resident composers for the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival. That’s because a number of participants in this year’s Festival have connections to Eastman, starting with MU’s Stefan Freund and most of the other members of Alarm Will Sound, who originally met while studying music at the famed conservatory in upstate New York.

Goldman (pictured), who’s an assistant professor of music theory at Eastman, also shares the conservatory connection with two of his fellow resident composers this year. David Crowell, profiled last week on this blog, is a graduate of Eastman, and Stylianos Dimou, who will be featured in this space tomorrow, currently is studying there for his master’s degree in composition.

Goldman’s compositions have received national and international recognition, including two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards; the Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize; the Hanson Young Composers Award, and many other awards. In addition to writing a new piece for Alarm Will Sound to perform at this year’s MNMSF, Goldman has been commissioned by the Banff Centre in Canada, The Norfolk New Music Festival, the Contrasts Quartet, and twice by the New Juilliard Ensemble.

In 2011, he traveled to Hong Kong for an event called “The Intimacy of Creativity – The Bright Sheng Partnership: Composers Meet Performers in Hong Kong,” where he was one of a group of participating composers that also included 2010 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival resident composer
Moon Young Ha.

A New York native, Goldman began his undergraduate studies in physics, and graduated summa cum laude with honors in music from Columbia University. Goldman then earned his MM and DMA in composition from The Juilliard School. For five years he was a radio host at WKCR-FM NY, and he also is active in the Music and Medicine Initiative, a collaboration between Juilliard and Cornell University. As a pianist, Goldman has performed at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, The Mannes International Keyboard Institute, and the Mannes Beethoven Institute. In addition to teaching at Eastman, Goldman has held positions as an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College and as a teaching fellow at Juilliard.

You can read a brief interview with Ted Goldman from 2011 here, and read more about him and his thoughts on music in his blog. In the embedded video windows below, you can see a presentation that Goldman gave about one of his scholarly interests, the music of Conlon Nancarrow. The third segment includes one of Goldman’s original compositions, written in Nancarrow’s style.

Ted Goldman on Conlon Nancarrow, part 1 – writing for player piano, and using ancient techniques (isorhythm) in modern music

Ted Goldman on Conlon Nancarrow, part 2 – More speed, more notes!, and recreating Nancarrow’s pianos, virtually

Ted Goldman on Conlon Nancarrow, part 3 – What Nancarrow would do if he had a sequencer, and an original composition in the style of Nancarrow