July 22, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Christopher Mayo
A native of Toronto, Christopher Mayo is the first Canadian to be a resident composer for the Mizzou International Composer Festival. A composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electronic music, Mayo (pictured) received his bachelor of music degree with honors at the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Glenn Gould Composition Prize and the William Erving Fairclough Scholarship. He relocated to London in 2003 to study at the Royal College of Music, where he earned a master of music in 2004 and a Ph.D in composition in 2011. His time there resulted in…
July 21, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Amadeus Regucera
Based in the San Francisco Bay area, Amadeus Regucera is (along with Clare Glackin and Selim Göncü) one of three resident composers at this year’s Mizzou International Composers Festival with a West Coast connection. A native Californian, he earned his B.A. in music in 2006 from the University of California, San Diego and last year completed work on his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. Regucera also has considerable experience in concert production, having served as production director of UC Berkeley’s Eco Ensemble, production and operations manager of the University of California,…
July 20, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Dan Visconti
Dan ViscontiDan Visconti, one of the two distinguished guest composers at the 2017 Mizzou International Composers Festival, is known both for his music and for his work as a speaker, writer, and activist seeking “to address social issues through music by re-imagining the arts as a form of cultural and civic service.” Visconti’s biography describes his compositions as “rooted in the improvisational energy and maverick spirit of rock, folk music, and other vernacular performance traditions,” and the Cleveland Plain Dealer has characterized his work as “both mature and youthful, bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a powerfully crafted…
July 19, 2017
Robert Sirota to discuss “Three Nocturnes” in pre-concert talk on Thursday, July 27
Composer Robert Sirota will discuss his new work “Three Nocturnes” in a pre-concert talk before Alarm Will Sound’s world premiere performance of it for the Mizzou International Composers Festival on Thursday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre. Sirota’s talk will begin at 7:00 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Sirota (pictured) will be joined by artist Simon Dinnerstein, whose drawings “Night,” “Night Scene I,” and “Purple Haze” provided inspiration for “Three Nocturnes”; and Alex Barker, director of Mizzou’s Museum of Art & Archaeology, where the exhibition “The Lasting World – Simon Dinnerstein and the…
July 18, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Charles Peck
It’s been a busy year so far for Charles Peck. In addition to being one of the eight resident composers for the 2017 Mizzou International Composers Festival, in the past two months he was selected for the Minnesota Orchestra’s Composers Institute, and also won the Boston New Music Initiative‘s annual commissioning competition. Just this week, Peck’s oboe and tape piece “Fade” was performed at the NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, a couple of days after his audiovisual work “Ferrous” was featured at the Caz Counterpoint Festival in Cazenovia, NY. In addition, in June the…
July 17, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Selim Göncü
Born in Turkey and educated in Hungary and Austria, Selim Göncü is one of four resident composers at the 2017 Mizzou International Composers Festival who originally comes from outside the USA. He currently is pursuing a PhD in composition at University of California, Berkeley, studying with Franck Bedrossian and Ken Ueno, and the Bay Area is just the latest stop in an itinerary that already has included some prestigious destinations. Göncü (pictured) started taking piano lessons at the age of eleven, and began his higher education with a year of study at the Liszt Academy…
July 14, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Clare Glackin
Resident composer Clare Glackin comes to the 2017 Mizzou International Composers Festival from the West Coast via Houston, Texas, where she recently graduated with an MM degree from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. A native of Mount Vernon, Washington, Glackin (pictured) previously earned a BM from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where she was named a Discovery Scholar and Outstanding Graduate of the composition program. Her primary teachers have been Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Pierre Jalbert and Richard Lavenda. She also attended the Aspen Music Festival and School in the…
July 13, 2017
Composers Festival spotlight: Aaron Parker
Aaron Parker is another of the resident composers helping to put the “international” in this year’s Mizzou International Composers Festival, coming to Columbia all the way from England. Parker currently is working toward a masters in experimental music at Brunel University in London, and, reflecting his continuing interest in teaching as well as composition, also serves as assistant director of music at Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire. A native of Manchester, Parker (pictured) previously completed a BMus in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, studying with Gary Carpenter and Larry…