Premieres of works by Resident and Guest Composers highlight the 2024 Mizzou International Composers Festival
The 2024 Mizzou International Composers Festival, held July 22-27 at the University of Missouri and various locations in Columbia, concluded with a concert at the Missouri Theatre. It featured new works by eight MICF Resident Composers, performed by Ensemble-in-Residence Alarm Will Sound. This year’s Resident Composers are Lukáš Janata, Davor Vincze, Yingting Liu, Lila Meretzky,…
Q&A with MICF Guest Composer Mary Kouyoumdjian
This year is not the first time MICF Guest Composer Mary Kouyoumdjian has been a part of the festival. In 2016 she was a Resident Composer still learning her art and forming new alliances with groups such as Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound. Paper Pianos, a piece she was working on back then, grew into…
MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Lila Meretzky
Lila Meretzky is a composer, educator, and visual artist born and raised in New York City. She works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums for concerts, dance, film, and installation. Her work often concerns the warping of memory and language, and subjective experiences of time. It has been programmed and commissioned by leading ensembles and…
MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Claire Hu
Claire Hu is an electroacoustic composer and multimedia artist. She explores the narrative and communicative power of music and synthesizes surreal worlds with fantastical juxtapositions of cultures, imagery, and characters. Claire enjoys collaborations with visual artists, engineers, architects, dancers, and sculptors as she imagines sounds rooted in connectedness and viscerality. She also writes and produces electronic,…
MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Davor Vincze
Davor Vincze is a composer of contemporary music whose artistic focus lies on meta-reality and musical mosaicking. Inspired by technology and science fiction, he searches for hidden acoustic spaces or ways to blur the real and the imaginary, often using electronics and AI tools. Working with mosaics (multiple copies of fragmented sound gestures), using technique…
MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Benjamin Scheuer
Benjamin Scheuer’s music is all about sensuality and humor. Both his staged and concert pieces contain theatrical elements and often evoke an atmosphere of darkly colored playfulness. In his works, found objects from daily life are frequently being presented onstage, either live or sampled. Scheuer doesn't consider himself to be a composer of electronic music,…
MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Liu Yingting
Liu Yingting, a composer from Hunan, China, studied at the China Conservatory of Music as an undergraduate and achieved top honors upon admission to the Central Conservatory of Music for her master's degree. Her creative journey is centered around exploring the harmonious blend of Chinese Taoism and Jesa culture with contemporary music, and her works are…
MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Mahbod Shirvani
Mahbod Shirvani is an Iranian electroacoustic composer and tar player based in the United States. He earned his bachelor's degree in Persian music performance, studying under Darioush Talaei, Siamak Aghaei, Hossein Alizadeh, and Azin Movahed at the University of Tehran. Mahbod Shirvani Shirvani has participated in international master classes and lessons with renowned composers such…