Sept. 10, 2024

Mizzou International Composers Festival announces 2025 Festival Dates and Distinguished Guest Composers; applications to become Resident Composers now open

The Mizzou New Music Initiative has set the dates, named the Distinguished Guest Composers, and is now accepting Resident Composer entries for the 2025 Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF). The 16th annual MICF will take place Monday, July 21 through Saturday, July 26 2025 at the University of Missouri School of Music in Columbia, MO. MICF will once again feature concerts…

Sept. 10, 2024

Five Fall Concerts in Columbia to Showcase Mizzou New Music Initiative Performers and Composers; Applications for Programs Announced

The Mizzou New Music Initiative (MNMI) will present five concerts this fall in Columbia to showcase the program’s newest musical groups and composers. MNMI is also seeking applications from original music composers locally and nationwide toparticipate in three of its programs. MNMI is a diverse array of programs that position the University of Missouri School of Music as a…

Sept. 5, 2024

Mizzou Music Composition Alum Nikolaus Schroeder Awarded Prestigious Barlow General Commission

University of Missouri graduate Nikolaus Schroeder has received a 2024 Barlow Endowment General Commission to write a new intermedia work for Kali Ensemble, a contemporary music collective based in the Hague, the Netherlands. Schroeder graduated from Mizzou in 2020 with a Master of Music in Composition degree. The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, one of…

Aug. 1, 2024

Premieres of works by Resident and Guest Composers highlight the 2024 Mizzou International Composers Festival

The 2024 Mizzou International Composers Festival, held July 22-27 at the University of Missouri and various locations in Columbia, concluded with a concert at the Missouri Theatre. It featured new works by eight MICF Resident Composers, performed by Ensemble-in-Residence Alarm Will Sound. This year’s Resident Composers are Lukáš Janata, Davor Vincze, Yingting Liu, Lila Meretzky,…

July 23, 2024

Q&A with MICF Guest Composer Mary Kouyoumdjian

This year is not the first time MICF Guest Composer Mary Kouyoumdjian has been a part of the festival. In 2016 she was a Resident Composer still learning her art and forming new alliances with groups such as Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound. Paper Pianos, a piece she was working on back then, grew into…

July 17, 2024

MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Lila Meretzky

Lila Meretzky is a composer, educator, and visual artist born and raised in New York City. She works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums for concerts, dance, film, and installation. Her work often concerns the warping of memory and language, and subjective experiences of time. It has been programmed and commissioned by leading ensembles and…

July 17, 2024

MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Claire Hu

Claire Hu is an electroacoustic composer and multimedia artist. She explores the narrative and communicative power of music and synthesizes surreal worlds with fantastical juxtapositions of cultures, imagery, and characters. Claire enjoys collaborations with visual artists, engineers, architects, dancers, and sculptors as she imagines sounds rooted in connectedness and viscerality. She also writes and produces electronic,…

July 17, 2024

MICF Resident Composer Spotlight: Davor Vincze

Davor Vincze is a composer of contemporary music whose artistic focus lies on meta-reality and musical mosaicking. Inspired by technology and science fiction, he searches for hidden acoustic spaces or ways to blur the real and the imaginary, often using electronics and AI tools. Working with mosaics (multiple copies of fragmented sound gestures), using technique…