July 6, 2010
Spotlight on Amy Beth Kirsten
Here’s another in our series of profiles of the resident composers taking part in this year’s Mizzou New Music Summer Festival: Born in East St. Louis, Illinois, Amy Beth Kirsten grew up in Kansas City and Chicago, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Vocal Jazz Studies from Benedictine University and a master’s degree in Composition from Chicago College of Performing Arts. She currently lives and works in New Haven, CT, and graduated from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in May 2010 with a doctorate in music composition. Kirsten was honored…
July 6, 2010
Mizzou New Music Summer Festival featured in Columbia Daily Tribune
The Mizzou New Music Summer Festival was the subject of a couple of stories published this past Sunday, July 4 in the Columbia Daily Tribune. Staff writer Aarik Danielsen penned an extensive overview of the festival, covering its concept and origins, guest composers and performers, and more. You can read his article online here. Danielsen also wrote a profile of one of the Festival’s resident composers, Jeremy Podgursky, which you can see here. UPDATE: You can read the entire unedited Q&A session with Podgursky on the Tribune‘s “Art Axis” blog. The Tribune‘s Danielsen also promises…
July 2, 2010
About the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts
The venue for the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival’s public performances will be the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts, an historic, newly restored former movie palace at 203 S. Ninth St. in downtown Columbia. First opened in 1928, the MTCA had a six-decade run as the city’s most prominent movie house, but by the late 1980s, the single-screen theater had fallen out of favor with moviegoers as new multi-screen cinemas were built in Columbia. The building was purchased in 1988 by the Missouri Symphony Society to serve as the home of the Missouri Symphony Orchestra. However,…
July 2, 2010
Spotlight on Moon Young Ha
Here’s another in our series of profiles of the resident composers taking part in this year’s Mizzou New Music Summer Festival: Moon Young Ha (pictured) combines classical instruments, video and electronics to create ethereal contemporary concert music. His work has been presented at festivals and concerts in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Lithuania, Canada and the United States, including the International Computer Music Conference, Bang on a Can Marathon, Vilniaus Veidai Festival, NoiseFloor Festival, KoMA Festival, the Society of Composers Inc. conference and others. Recently, Ha has collaborated…
June 30, 2010
Spotlight on Lisa Moore
The Mizzou New Music Summer Festival is delighted to have pianist Lisa Moore (pictured) as a guest performer. Born in Canberra and raised in Australia and London before moving to the USA in 1980, Moore is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stonybrook. She now lives in New York City, where she collaborates with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists. The New York Times says “her energy is illuminating” and the New Yorker magazine called her “visionary” and “New York’s queen of avant-garde piano.” A founding member of…
June 30, 2010
Spotlight on Christopher Dietz
Here’s another in our series of brief profiles of the eight resident composers who will be part of the inaugural Mizzou New Music Summer Festival: The music of Milwaukee native Christopher Dietz (pictured) has been recognized with honors and awards from the Camargo Foundation, the Banff Centre, Copland House, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute and several other institutions. Dietz earned a Ph.D. in Composition and Theory from the University of Michigan, as well as degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Wisconsin. He currently…
June 29, 2010
Spotlight on Francisco Cortez-Alvarez
The inaugural Mizzou New Music Summer Festival will feature the world premieres of new works from eight resident composers selected to be part of the event from a group of more than 120 applicants from around the world. Here’s the first in a series of brief profiles of those composers: Pianist/composer Francisco Cortes-Alvarez (pictured) was born in Mexico City and received a degree in music composition with honorific mention and the Gabino Barreda Medal from the National School of Music (ENM), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He currently is pursuing a master’s of music…
June 28, 2010
Spotlight on Alarm Will Sound
The inaugural Mizzou New Music Summer Festival is fortunate to have Alarm Will Sound (pictured) as our resident ensemble. They’ll kick off the festival with a concert at the Missouri Theater and Center for the Arts on Monday, July 12, and will work with our eight emerging composers throughout the week, culminating in the world premiere of their new works at the concluding concert on Sunday, July 18. Their performances have been described as “equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity” by the London Financial Times and as “a…