Nov. 16, 2015
Creating Original Music Project (COMP) to recognize original music
from Missouri student composers with awards, cash
2015 COMP award winnersFor ten years, the Mizzou New Music Initiative’s Creating Original Music Project (COMP) has encouraged the musical dreams and aspirations of hundreds of K-12 students across Missouri, offering positive recognition and prizes, performance and educational opportunities, and more. Some past winners of the annual statewide competition sponsored by the University of Missouri School of Music and the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation have even gone on to earn to full college scholarships or launch professional careers in music. Now, heading into its second decade, COMP once again is looking for new, original music from student composers and songwriters…
Nov. 9, 2015
Erin Gee to serve as distinguished guest composer
for 2016 Mizzou International Composers Festival
The Mizzou New Music Initiative announced today that Erin Gee will be a distinguished guest composer at the 2016 Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF), scheduled for Monday, July 25 through Saturday, July 30 on the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia. Currently an assistant professor of music at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Gee (pictured) is known for her series of compositions entitled “Mouthpieces,” which “use non-traditional vocal techniques, devoid of semantic language, to construct intricate and subtle patterns of a diverse array of vocal sounds.” Her works are taught in the composition and musicology…
Nov. 4, 2015
Ben Colagiovanni wins statewide composition competition
University of Missouri composition student Ben Colagiovanni has won this year’s award in the “Young Artist” category of the Missouri state division of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) composition competition. Colagiovanni, a senior pursuing a bachelor’s degree in music composition at Mizzou, was recognized for “Forest Park Rhapsody.” The work originally was one of four commissioned in 2014 by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation for the Mizzou New Music Ensemble to perform at an event for members of Forest Park Forever’s Leffingwell Society. “Forest Park Rhapsody” now will be entered in the national MTNA composition competition,…
Nov. 4, 2015
Erin Höerchler featured in Columbia Daily Tribune
Mizzou composition major Erin Höerchler was the subject of a feature article last week in the Columbia Daily Tribune. Reported by the Daily Tribune‘s Amy Wilder, the profile is part of the paper’s weekly “Niche” series highlighting artists in the Columbia area. Höerchler (pictured), a junior who’s originally from Jefferson City, used the opportunity to talk briefly about her compositional process, telling Wilder, “When I write, it’s like each part is a character, and there’s drama in between those characters…I’m not just writing sounds and music. It’s a story. There’s a whole aesthetic and a time period…
Oct. 27, 2015
Missouri Composers Orchestra Project seeks
orchestral, choral works for performance in March
For the past four years, the Missouri Composers Orchestra Project (MOCOP) has been providing performance opportunities for new orchestral music written by Missouri residents. For its fifth year, MOCOP is expanding, both musically and geographically. The 2016 competition will include both choral and orchestral works in five categories, three for Missouri composers and two added specifically for composers currently studying at schools in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). MOCOP is a collaborative effort involving the Mizzou New Music Initiative, Columbia Civic Orchestra (pictured), and the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. Each year, recently composed works are selected through a…
Oct. 23, 2015
University Singers to premiere new work by Chen Yi
This weekend, the Mizzou New Music Initiative and the University of Missouri School of Music will have the honor of welcoming Chen Yi for a brief residency on the MU campus and a world premiere. Chen (pictured) currently is a distinguished professor of composition at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition “Si Ji” (“Four Seasons”), she was born and raised in Guangzhou, China and is known as a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural…
Oct. 9, 2015
Composer David Maslanka to visit Mizzou
Although the Mizzou International Composers Festival represents the largest gathering of composers taking place each year in Columbia, the School of Music and the Mizzou New Music Initiative also are pleased to be able to host individual composers for short-term residencies during the school year. Composer David Maslanka (pictured) will be in residence at Mizzou next week, and he’ll have a busy schedule while he’s visiting Columbia. On Tuesday, October 13, Maslanka will present a seminar for composition students, and that evening, the Missouri Quintet will perform a concert including one of his works…
Oct. 7, 2015
Henry Breneman Stewart wins 2016 Sinquefield Composition Prize
The University of Missouri School of Music and the Mizzou New Music Initiative have awarded the 2016 Sinquefield Composition Prize to Henry Breneman Stewart. Stewart, a native of Lancaster County, PA, is a first-year graduate student at Mizzou studying composition with Stefan Freund and piano with Janice Wenger. He submitted “Threnody,” a work for string quartet, to the competition and was selected for the prize by a panel of independent judges. The adjudicators for the 2016 competition were: * R. Paul Crabb, director of choral activities, University of Missouri; and artistic director, Prometheus;…