July 8, 2015

If you’re coming to Columbia

If you’re planning on coming to Columbia for the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival, you can get advance tickets online for all three concerts, which will be presented again this year at the Missouri Theatre: Thursday, July 23: Alarm Will Sound Friday, July 24: Mizzou New Music Saturday, July 25: Eight World Premieres Also, you may find these links useful for planning and/or during your visit: Visitors information Columbia Convention and Visitors Bureau University of Missouri Visitors Guide Columbia Regional Airport Vox Magazine’s guide…

July 7, 2015

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 orchestration at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. As a distinguished guest composer for the MICF, he’ll work with the festival’s eight resident composers as a group and individually, and also will give a public presentation on his music.

June 12, 2015

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, and received their world premiere performances at the 2014 festival. To play the track, just click on the embedded SoundCloud player. The 2015 MICF takes place July 20 – 25 in Columbia. To get your tickets to hear this year’s exciting…

June 2, 2015

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

New Muse Piano Duo 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 syndicated radio program “Relevant Tones,” and praised for offering “kinetic excitement” by the hometown Columbia Daily Tribune. DRAX The 2015 MICF will take place from Monday, July 20 through Saturday, July 25 in Columbia. The grand finale of the week will feature the world premieres of…

May 28, 2015

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, while also working side-by-side with esteemed composers such as Steven Mackey, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, Caroline Shaw, and Steve Reich. Martinez (pictured) is one of ten composers selected for this year’s intensive program, which will take place May 28 –…

May 6, 2015

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

Senior composition major Haley Myers talks about creating the soundtrack for "Herstory" 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 last week, documents the professional careers, work experiences and associational life of senior women journalists who have participated in the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS), an organization of female journalists that grew out of a 1984 panel discussion at the Missouri School of Journalism. The site features…

May 1, 2015

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]…

April 29, 2015

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

The Living World at the St. Louis Zoo 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 the public. The program will include three new compositions from University of Missouri students inspired by the Zoo and commissioned specifically for the occasion by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. “Predators” is by Kaylene Cypret, a graduate student working on a master’s in composition and orchestral…