July 18, 2018
Composers Festival spotlight: Alex Mincek
The Mizzou New Music Initiative is pleased to welcome Alex Mincek as one of the two distinguished guest composers for this year’s Mizzou International Composers Festival. In addition to composing, New York-based Mincek also is the saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and artistic director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a contemporary music group he founded in 1998. Two of his works will be performed during the MICF. Thursday night’s concert by Alarm Will Sound will feature the world premiere of “Chimeras,” a newly commissioned work by Mincek. Then on Friday, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble will perform…
July 17, 2018
Composers Festival spotlight: Douglas Osmun
The University of Missouri’s representative among this year’s group of resident composers at the Mizzou International Composers Festival is Douglas Osmun, who recently earned his M.M. in composition from Mizzou. Originally from Zeeland, MI, Osmun previously received his bachelor’s degree in music from Western Michigan University, where he was named a Beulah and Harold McKee Scholar. He is a composer of both acoustic and electronic music who describes his work as “deeply concerned with elements of sound embodiment, spatialization, and perception.” Osmun’s new work for the MICF is called “in effigies,” and it will be performed along with…
July 16, 2018
Composers Festival spotlight: Amanda Feery
If there were a prize for “longest distance traveled to take part in the Mizzou International Composers Festival,” resident composer Amanda Feery would be the winner for 2018, coming to Columbia all the way from Dublin, Ireland. Originally from County Offaly in Ireland, Feery recently moved back to her home country after completing her PhD in composition here in the USA at Princeton University. She previously earned a B.A. in music and an M.Phil in music and media technologies from Trinity College Dublin. For the MICF, Feery has composed a new work titled “This is the House…
July 16, 2018
Robert Morris to serve as guest composer for 2018 Mizzou International Composers Festival; Chen Yi withdraws for medical reasons
Composer Chen Yi, who had been scheduled to be one of the distinguished guest composers later this month at the 2018 Mizzou International Composers Festival, has withdrawn from the festival due to medical reasons. In place of Chen, Robert Morris, composer and professor at the Eastman School of Music, has agreed to serve as a guest composer for the 2018 MICF. “We regret that Chen Yi is unable to participate in this year’s festival. She recently had surgery and though a full recovery is expected, it’s taking longer than originally anticipated,” said Stefan Freund, professor of…
July 16, 2018
Composers Festival spotlight: Missouri Clarinet Quartet
The Missouri Clarinet Quartet will make their Mizzou International Composers Festival debut as a part of the “Mizzou New Music” concert on Friday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre. Founded in 2017 under the guidance of assistant teaching professor Wesley Warnhoff, the MCQ is committed “to community engagement and the expansion of the clarinet quartet repertoire.” The members of the quartet include Victoria Hargrove, a Mizzou alum now entering the DMA program at Michigan State University; music educator and Mizzou alum Erin Rhomberg; Andrew Mahonen, a Mizzou graduate student and teaching assistant; and Austin Wright, a graduate student…
July 16, 2018
Yoshi Onishi answers “5 Questions” from I Care If You Listen
The Mizzou New Music Initiative’s new postdoctoral fellow Yoshiaki “Yoshi” Onishi is the subject of a “5 Questions” interview published last week by the new-music website I Care If You Listen. In the interview, Onishi (pictured) talks with ICIYL’s Alexander Rothe about his compositional process and his ongoing project “Les Six Aspects du Néant” (“The Six Aspects of Nothingness”). The work is a cycle of six pieces for string quartet, parts of which will be performed this fall at the Vertixe Sonora Festival in Spain, the 45th International Viola Congress in Rotterdam, and the Trieste Prima Festival in Italy.
July 12, 2018
Composers Festival spotlight: Viet Cuong
Resident composer Viet Cuong comes to the 2018 Mizzou International Composers Festival from Philadelphia, where he currently is studying in the Curtis Institute of Music‘s Artist Diploma program and finishing his PhD at Princeton University. Born in West Hills, CA and raised in Marietta, GA (near Atlanta), Cuong also holds an MFA from Princeton. He earned his bachelor and master of music degrees from the Peabody Institute at The Johns Hopkins University, where he won the Peabody Alumni Award for being valedictorian and the Gustav Klemm Award for excellence in composition. The piece Cuong has…
July 11, 2018
Composers Festival spotlight: Christine Burke
Like many contemporary composers, Christine Burke does more than write music. Burke, who’s one of the seven resident composers for the 2018 Mizzou International Composers Festival, also is a clarinetist and bandleader of the Christine Burke Ensemble, giving her a ready outlet for new musical ideas. Burke is a fellow Midwesterner, coming to the MICF from Iowa City, IA, where she earned her master’s degree from the University of Iowa and still resides. Previously, the Indiana native in 2014 got her bachelor of music degree in clarinet performance from Duquesne University. While in Pittsburgh, she was actively…