Composers Festival spotlight: Justin Pounds

Resident composer Justin Pounds is the University of Missouri's representative at the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival, and along with Christopher Stark, one of two resident composers this year with ties to Missouri and St. Louis. A St. Louis native who grew up in the suburb of Oakville, Pounds earned his bachelor of music degree…

Composers Festival spotlight: Alessandro Ratoci

Alessandro Ratoci has the longest journey of any of this year's resident composers to get to the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival, coming to Columbia from Lausanne, Switzerland, where he teaches electronic music at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève (Geneva University of Music). Born in Tuscany, Italy, Ratoci majored in composition, piano, and…

Composers Festival spotlight: Christopher Stark

Christopher Stark is one of eight resident composers for the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival, and, along with Mizzou's Justin Pounds, one of two resident composers this year with ties to Missouri and the St. Louis area. Currently an assistant professor of composition at Washington University in St. Louis, Stark is a native of Polson,…

Composers Festival spotlight: Emily Koh

Resident composer Emily Koh comes to the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival by way of Singapore, her place of birth, and Boston, where she currently is a Ph.D. candidate in composition and theory at Brandeis University. A bassist as well as a composer, Koh also serves as a visiting faculty member at the Longy School…

Composers Festival spotlight: Andrew Norman

Along with Hans Abrahamsen, the Mizzou New Music Initiative is pleased to welcome Andrew Norman as one of our two distinguished guest composers for the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival. Currently an assistant professor of composition at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, Norman (pictured) is a graduate of Yale and the…

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…

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,…

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

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…