Sep. 5, 2024
Mizzou Music Composition Alum Nikolaus Schroeder Awarded Prestigious Barlow General Commission
University of Missouri graduate Nikolaus Schroeder has received a 2024 Barlow Endowment General Commission to write a new intermedia work for Kali Ensemble, a contemporary music collective based in the Hague, the Netherlands. Schroeder graduated from Mizzou in 2020 with a Master of Music in Composition degree. The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, one of the premier commissioning organizations for new concert music in the U.S., was established in 1983 through the generosity of Milton A. and Gloria Barlow and is administered by Brigham Young University. Schroeder was…
Aug. 1, 2024
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, Benjamin Scheuer, ess whiteley, Mahbod Shirvani, and Claire Hu. The Festival also included a concert in which Alarm Will Sound performed pieces by Distinguished Guest Composers Mary Kouyoumdjian (Paper Pianos, a finalist for…
July 23, 2024
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 an evening-length multimedia “audio documentary” that was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music. We conducted an email interview with Kouyoumdjian to learn about her past experiences at MICF and what she expects from…
July 17, 2024
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 institutions including Contemporaneous, TAK Ensemble, the MATA Festival, Sandbox Percussion, Unheard-of//Ensemble, icarus Quartet, and percussionist Ji Hye Jung. Meretzky’s composition Dinner will receive its world premiere at MICF, performed by Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound. Lila Meretzky She…
July 17, 2024
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, indie pop, and dance music. Claire Hu Hu’s works have been described as colorful, engaging and imaginative, and have been featured at the highSCORE Festival, Mayflower Art Center, Mise-En Music Festival, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, SoundSCAPE, Suncoast Composers Fellowship Program, Sō Percussion Summer Institute, Clyde…
July 17, 2024
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 he calls “microllage,” he searches for fluid sounds that allow for non-binary, ambiguous, or “androgynous” interpretations. The world premiere of Vincze’s piece Ashes will be performed at MICF by Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound. “It was…
July 17, 2024
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, but rather focuses on a world of “live-electrics” in which sounds are produced with the easiest and most economic means possible. His main interest is the human being playing music with its individual characteristic and its tendency to fail whilst technology just…
July 12, 2024
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 deeply rooted in religious music culture. Liu Yingting Yingting has won numerous awards in international music competitions, including the 10th Rivers Awards Composition Competition (RACC), the 17th Sun River Prize (ISCM) New Music Competition, the 4th New Music Generation International Composition Competition, the 2nd…