July 12, 2021

Composers Festival spotlight: Karim Sulayman

The Mizzou New Music Initiative will welcome tenor Karim Sulayman as a guest performer for the 2021 Mizzou International Composers Festival. Sulayman (pictured) will appear with resident ensemble Alarm Will Sound when they premiere the first part of distinguished guest composer David T. Little’s monodrama "What Belongs to You" as part of the "World Premieres…

July 9, 2021

Composers Festival spotlight: Shuying Li

Resident composer Shuying Li comes to the 2021 Mizzou International Composers Festival from Spokane, WA, where since 2020 she has served as assistant professor of composition and music theory at Gonzaga University. Yet her musical journey actually began years ago and much further away, at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in her native China. In…

July 8, 2021

Composers Festival spotlight: Paul Mortilla

When Paul Mortilla began his studies at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in 2014, he already had more experience and training as a composer than most undergraduates. That's because Mortilla, a Florida native who is one of nine resident composers for the 2021 Mizzou International Composers Festival, actually began writing original music on his…

July 7, 2021

Composers Festival spotlight: Yu Kuwabara

The music of composer Yu Kuwabara explores connections between the personal and the traditional, the past and the present, and Japan and the rest of the world. One of the nine resident composers for the 2021 Mizzou International Composers Festival, Kuwabara (pictured) is from Tokyo, and completed her master's degree at Tokyo University of the…

July 6, 2021

Composers Festival spotlight: Ana Paola Santillán Alcocer

Resident composer Ana Paola Santillán Alcocer comes to the 2021 Mizzou International Composers Festival from Mexico City, Mexico. She earned her doctoral degree in composition from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she was composer-in-residence for the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble and also worked with electronic media at the McGill Digital Composition Studios. Previously, she…

June 16, 2021

Mizzou New Music Ensemble featured on new recording

The Mizzou New Music Ensemble is featured on Black Pierrot, a new album by Mizzou's University Singers that is being released this week on the Centaur Records label. The album (pictured) is described as "a program of great choral works, including one work from the 1500s, works from the 20th Century," plus the title track,…

June 14, 2021

Mizzou International Composers Festival to return
July 26-31 with nine world premieres and more

After a year in which the COVID-19 pandemic forced last-minute changes in programming, the Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF) is back in 2021 in a more familiar form. Presented Monday, July 26 through Saturday, July 31 by the Mizzou New Music Initiative (MNMI) and the University of Missouri School of Music, the twelfth annual MICF…

April 29, 2021

Springfield Symphony to perform Stefan Freund’s “Ragfare” in concerts on Saturday, May 8

The Springfield Symphony will perform "Ragfare," a work written by University of Missouri professor of composition Stefan Freund, in a pair of concerts on Saturday, May 8 at the Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts in Springfield, MO. Freund (pictured), who's also a cellist, conductor, and the artistic director of the Mizzou New…