May 27, 2025
Dr. Tiffany M. Skidmore joins MNMI as Managing Director
The Mizzou New Music Initiative is pleased to announce that Dr. Tiffany M. Skidmore will be joining our team as Managing Director. Dr. Skidmore is an American composer and performer based in Columbia, Missouri. She has held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Virginia Tech, and the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where, from 2023-2024, she held the Birge Cary Chair in Music Composition. Most recently, she was a Visiting Professor at McGill University, in residence at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). She is Co-Founder, Executive…
May 19, 2025
MOCOP honorable mention Violet Burney featured in the Ladue News
Violet Burney, whose composition “Sleep” earned an honorable mention in the Mizzou New Music Initiative‘s 2025 Missouri Composers Project Choral Open Age category, was featured in the May 16 issue of the Ladue News. The piece was performed as part of a concert featuring the Columbia Civic Orchestra and Premiere Vocal Artists on April 13 at Broadway Christian Church.
May 8, 2025
Mizzou New Music Ensemble to Perform Four Concerts with Residencies in South America May 15-24, 2025
The Mizzou New Music Ensemble will travel to South America May 15-24, 2025, for a tour of concert performances and residencies at four leading universities in Lima, Peru, and Medellín and Bogota, Colombia. Mizzou New Music Initiative Artistic Director Stefan Freund will lead each concert and residency, and Managing Director Andrea Luque Káram will assist on the tour, which will include eight musicians and composers. Each concert on the tour will feature performances of a work by a local composer associated with the host institution. At each location, the Mizzou composers…
May 5, 2025
Mizzou New Music Initiative to expand thanks to $4.6 million gift
A $4.6 million gift from Dr. Jeanne Sinquefield, Rex Sinquefield, and the Sinquefield CharitableFoundation will ensure University of Missouri students continue to redefine the sounds oftomorrow through the Mizzou New Music Initiative. The funding will expand opportunities for students and faculty, supercharging a program alreadyknown for fostering bold, original compositions and turning visionary ideas into reality. “My goal is to make Missouri a mecca for musical composition,” said Jeanne Sinquefield, amember of the UM Board of Curators and founder of the Mizzou New Music Initiative (MNMI). “The MNMI covers K-12, undergraduate,…
April 30, 2025
World premiere performance of Yoell Tewolde’s “waves on the shore” earns rave review from St. Louis American
Chris King of The St. Louis American reviewed the world premiere of Yoell Tewolde’s waves on the shore, which was performed as part of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra‘s “Live at the Sheldon” series on April 24 at the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis. Yoell Tewolde Here’s what King wrote about Tewolde, waves on the shore, and the MNMI. One of the many joys of the Live at the Sheldon series is that these concerts feature the world premiere of a…
April 24, 2025
Oswald Huýnh (Mizzou Master of Music in Composition, 2022) named as a winner of the 2025-26 Rome Prize
The American Academy in Rome has named Oswald Huýnh (Mizzou Master of Music in Composition, 2022) as laureate of the Frederic A Juilliard | Walter Damrosch Rome Prize in Musical Composition. According to the organization, the Rome Prize is “a rigorous competition supporting innovative fellows in the arts, humanities, and sciences, offering artists and scholars the time, space setting, and colleagues to explore and create in the singular city of Rome.” Huýnh is one of 35 recipients who will reside at the Academy’s 11-acre grounds in the Eternal City for five to ten months,…
April 10, 2025
Mizzou Student Yoell Tewolde featured on the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s SLSO Stories blog
Mizzou sophomore composition student Yoell Tewolde was recently featured on the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s SLSO Stories blog. Tewolde’s piece waves on the shore for piano and wind quintet will be given its world premiere performance at 7:30 p.m. April 24 as part of the SLSO’s final “Live at the Sheldon” chamber-music concert of the season. The series is an ongoing collaboration between the SLSO and the Mizzou New Music Initiative. The April 24 concert, held at the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis, is titled “Wind and Water” and is curated by the…
April 8, 2025
Song composed for Creating Original Music Project creates a win for student as well as a small Missouri community
For evidence of how the Mizzou New Music Initiative’s Creating Original Music Project can impact not just an aspiring songwriter/composer, but also a teacher, a school, and even a community, look no further than Galena, Missouri’s Brendan Rieth and his song “Pretty,” which earned second place in COMP’s High School Acoustic category. Galena – population 455 as of the 2020 census – “is like, your picture-perfect definition of a rural small town,” says Drew Tate, the Music Director at Galena High School, the student body of which numbers around 200. “It’s very close-knit. So…