Composers Festival spotlight: Hans Abrahamsen

All of us at the Mizzou New Music Initiative are pleased to welcome Hans Abrahamsen as one of our two distinguished guest composers for the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival. The winner of major honors including the Carl Nielsen Prize (1989) and the Wilhelm Hansen Prize (1998), Abrahamsen (pictured) since 1995 has taught composition and…

Music from 2014 MICF now on SoundCloud

Now that tickets are on sale for the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival, here's a chance to whet your musical appetite with some sounds from the 2014 MICF. These works were written by 2014 resident composers Holly Harrison, Texu Kim, and Michael Schachter (pictured, from left) especially for the Festival's resident ensemble Alarm Will Sound,…

Tickets for 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival
go on sale Monday, June 8

Tickets for the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF) will go on sale at 10:00 a.m. CDT next Monday, June 8. Heralded as one of the premier contemporary music events in the Midwest, the MICF has been called “a vibrant inferno of creative energy” by the internationally…

José Martínez selected for LA Phil composers workshop

Mizzou student José Martínez is headed to California this week to take part in a workshop for young composers sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The Next on Grand: National Composers Intensive is a three-day program that lets selected American composition students create new works for the Los Angeles-based "experimental classical ensemble" wild Up,…

“Herstory” website features original music from Mizzou composer Haley Myers

Haley Myers, a senior composition major at Mizzou, has written and performed original music for The Herstory: JAWS Oral History Project, a new website created by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. "Herstory," which went online…

A ‘behind-the-scenes” look at the Mizzou New Music Ensemble

In conjunction with their concert last Sunday, April 26 at Whitmore Recital Hall, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble staged a "Twitter takeover," offering followers a behind-the-scenes look at their preparations for the show. You can see what happened in the slideshow below... [View the story "Mizzou New Music Ensemble with composer David Biedenbender" on Storify]

Mizzou New Music Ensemble to perform new works
inspired by St. Louis Zoo in concert on Friday, May 8

In the latest in an ongoing series of concerts featuring newly commissioned, site-specific works, the Mizzou New Music Ensemble will perform at 2:00 p.m. Friday, May 8 in The Living World at the St. Louis Zoo. The concert is free and open to…

Tom McKenney featured in Columbia Daily Tribune, on KBIA

W. Thomas "Tom" McKenney, who has taught composition and music theory at Mizzou for 47 years and has served as co-artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative since it began in 2010,  is retiring from full-time teaching after the Spring 2015 semester. Although Professor McKenney (pictured) will still be around Columbia, teaching some classes,…