Aug. 27, 2025
Three 2025 Mizzou Master of Music Composition graduates accept placements at prestigious universities
Three 2025 Mizzou Master of Music Composition graduates have accepted placements at prestigious universities where they will pursue further advanced degrees in music. Seda Balci has accepted an assistantship to pursue a PhD in Music Composition and Technology at Northwestern University. Harry Gonzalez has accepted an assistantship to pursue a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at Rice University. And Giovanni Porfirio has been accepted to the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin. Seda Balci Harry Gonzalez Giovanni Porfirio Balci says her music is shaped by her three great…
Aug. 21, 2025
2011 Mizzou International Composer Festival Resident Composer David Biedenbender Awarded Prestigious Barlow Prize
The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University has announced that David Biedenbender is the recipient of the 2025 Barlow Prize: a commission to compose a major new work of 15 minutes for wind symphony. The piece will be premiered by a consortium of performers which will include the BYU Wind Symphony, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra, the United States Navy Band, and the University of Michigan Symphony Band. His submission was selected from 526 entries by composers hailing from 46 countries. David Biedenbender The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, one…
July 21, 2025
Five Questions for MICF Resident Composer Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei
Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform his composition Residues III. The Cheers of Dawn at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public. Sabzghabaei is a creator who is interested in looking at time through different lenses: unpacking notions of tradition, exploring memories of those past, and investigating nostalgic frameworks that lean forward. His music has…
July 21, 2025
Five Questions for MICF Resident Composer Geli Li
Geli Li is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform Li’s composition The Smell of Sunshine at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public. Li’s music has been performed on three continents by more than 30 ensembles and orchestras, including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Talea Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, and Hanatsu Miroir, among many others. A winner of the Henri…
July 21, 2025
Five Questions for MICF Resident Composer Chris L. Thompson
Chris L. Thompson is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform his composition Shadows Uplifted at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public. Christopher Thompson, also known as “Master Christopher,” is a multi-disciplined performer-composer who creates innovative ways to blur the distinction between genres. Through his project “Music Desegregation,” he merges contemporary art music, jazz, and percussion, with notated rap.
July 21, 2025
Five Questions for MICF Resident Composer Matt Smith
Matt Smith is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform his composition As Brightness Is To Time at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public. Matt Smith is a Los Angeles-based composer whose music blends lush harmonies, lyricism, and imaginative soundscapes, inspired by storytelling, philosophy, and nature. His works have been performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Atlantic Music Festival,…
July 21, 2025
Five Questions for MICF Resident Composer Parker Callister
Parker Callister is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform Callister’s composition if it broke at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public. Callister is a composer, music technologist, and guitarist from Ithaca, NY. His music draws influence from electronic and noise music while also operating in a contemporary music idiom. Compositional interests include close-mic amplification, spectral harmony, and the…
July 21, 2025
Five Questions for MICF Resident Composer Bobby Ge
Bobby Ge is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform his composition You Are a Topological Donut at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 26, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public. Ge is an American-born, Shanghai-raised composer and media artist whose work engages with themes of communication, home, and hybridity. Described as “expressive and gripping” [Financial Times] and “exciting, frenzied, unpredictable” [CityNews CBR], his work is…