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 her sophomore year there, Shuying (pictured) won a scholarship to continue her undergraduate studies at The Hartt School in Connecticut. She went on to earn doctoral and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan, She continues to be a research…
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 own at the precocious age of 11, drawing on a eclectic variety of influences ranging from church hymns to electronic dance music. A couple of years later, he began studying formally with faculty members from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Mortilla…
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 Arts (TUA). She now is a lecturer at Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, and also teaches composition courses to children for the Yamaha Music Foundation. For several years, she has been researching and learning traditional Japanese music and arts. Toward that end,…
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 earned her Master of Music degree from Rice University and received her LTCL Licentiate in music composition from Trinity College London. Alcocer (pictured) enjoys exploring multimedia and visual arts elements, adopting abstract and/or narrative components in order to combine…
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, which is performed by the Singers and the Mizzou New Music Ensemble, directed by Stefan Freund. It’s the world premiere recording of this new work, which was commissioned from composer William Averitt by R. Paul Crabb, director of choral activities at…
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 will showcase the world premieres of new works from nine resident composers and more, with all four concerts streamed online for free. The schedule of performances is: Tuesday, July 27: “World Premieres I,” featuring resident ensemble Alarm Will Sound performing…
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 Music Initiative, originally composed “Ragfare” for the Columbia Civic Orchestra to play at the reopening in 2008 of the renovated Missouri Theatre in Columbia. Inspired for the occasion by the music of Scott Joplin, Freund says that he “wanted to write a…
April 27, 2021
New documentary with score by Mizzou students to get free screening Monday, May 3 at Missouri Theatre
A new documentary film produced at Mizzou and featuring a musical score composed and performed by students from the School of Music will get a free screening at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, May 3 at the Missouri Theatre. “Keep the Cameras Rolling: The Pedro Zamora Way” tells the story of one of the early stars of the MTV reality show “The Real World” who became a noted advocate for people with AIDS before dying in 1994 at age 22. The film was co-directed by MU professors William Horner and Stacey Woelfel, who first approached the School of…