Recent Awards (list from the past decade)
Archive of previous newsletters
September 2022 Newsletter
Alumni News |
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Ábel M.G.E. (BM ’18) Part of Composer Team for New Football (Soccer) Opera to Accompany the World Cup Gods of the Game, a new opera about corruption in football, will see its premiere at Grange Park Opera (Surrey, UK) this October and subsequently a TV broadcast on Sky Arts to coincide with the Qatar world cup in early November. Inspired by the 2015 corruption scandal in FIFA’s leadership, the opera tells a story of inequity in global football and features among its cast comedian Lee Mack and an amateur chorus of football fans. Gods of the Game is a co-commission from Sky Arts, Factory Films, and Grange Park Opera and was co-composed by Julian Philips, Ábel M.G.E., Lucy Armstrong, Aran O’grady, and Blasio Kavuma (the “Five-a-side collective”) to a libretto by Phil Porter. Find out more here. |
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Keith Fitch (BM, ’89, MM, ’92, DMus, ’95) Commission, Recording, and Premiere Keith Fitch has received a commission from the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition for a new work for their resident ensemble, The Grossman Ensemble, to be premiered in March 2023. His Three English Sonnets for solo flute/alto flute were recently recorded by flutist Mary Kay Fink of The Cleveland Orchestra to be released by Azica Records this fall. His as Earth dreams, commissioned by harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, will be premiered by Ms. Kondonassis in October and appears on her latest CD, “Five Minutes for Earrth,” also on Azica. |
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Will Rowe’s (BM ’14, MM ’16) Commercial Études to be Released on “Composer Alive” Album Will Rowe’s Commercial Études will be released Thursday, September 8th on Access Contemporary Music’s “Invisible Cities” label. Performed on the album by Amy Wurtz, the solo piano vignettes deconstructing jingles from 1950s-60s TV ads were commissioned as part of Access Contemporary Music’s “Composer Alive” series, and the album features other selected works from the program. Additionally, Amy will perform Commercial Études on September 8th, 7:30 CST at Artifact Events in Chicago to celebrate the release of the album. |
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Tyler Taylor (DM ‘20) to begin full-time residency with Louisville Orchestra Sep. 1 Tyler has been selected as one of three composers to participate in the Louisville Orchestra’s inaugural Creators Corps residency program. In this role Tyler will write at least one large piece for the orchestra to be premiered in the spring of 2023, help curate concerts, and coordinate several community engagement programs. As a Louisville native, Tyler is excited to work with the Louisville Orchestra in this capacity, and to share his story with his community. |
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Neil Thornock (DM ’06) Receives Barlow Commission Neil Thornock has received a commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition for a new piece for the Fabrik Quartet. He was one of 13 composers out of over 200 applicants selected to receive the commission. |
Student News |
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Pierce Baruk at highSCORE Festival & Del Mar International Composers Symposium In August 2022, Pierce Baruk attended highSCORE Festival (Pavia, Italy) and Del Mar International Composers Symposium “DMICS” (Del Mar, California). highSCORE is the premier contemporary music festival in Italy. Pierce attended daily online masterclasses, workshops, lectures, and composition colloquiums led by Amy Beth Kirsten, David Serkin Ludwig, Dmitri Tymoczko, Christopher Theofanidis, and Klaus Lang. He also attended seminars led by Alberto Barberis (web audio API / developing an artistic web audio application) and Giovanni Cestino (“Musicological Tools for Artistic Research”). At DMICS, Pierce worked with Nina Young and Robert Honstein. His piece Reset was premiered and recorded by Hub New Music. Additionally, Pierce presented his work in composition forums and collaborated with IU alumnus Matthew Schultheis on a composition for violin that was read by Domenic Salerni of the Grammy award-winning Attacca Quartet. |
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Kian Ravaei releases debut single Kian Ravaei’s piece Good Trouble is available for streaming on music platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. The work pays tribute to civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis after his death in 2020, inspired by his message to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” for the sake of pursuing social justice. Through the end of September, 100% of Bandcamp proceeds will be donated to the John and Lillian Miles Lewis Foundation, a non-profit committed to continuing John Lewis’s legacy of protecting civil rights through nonviolent change. |
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Walker Smith to Premiere New “Sound of Molecules” Show at WonderLab Museum Have you ever wondered what a molecule sounds like? Undergraduate music and chemistry major Walker Smith has the answer! Join him for his exciting show “The Sound of Molecules” at WonderLab Museum of Science in Bloomington on September 17 and 18! Appearing as the characters “Maestro Molecules” and “Roy G. Biv,” Walker will take you on an exciting musical tour of the molecular world, featuring lights, lasers, and a whole lot of laughs. This show is supported by generous grant funding from the Jacobs School of Music, the IU Center for Rural Engagement, the Hutton Honors College, the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and the 2022 Jacobs School of Music Innovation Competition, in which Walker received the first-place prize. There are four shows in total, and show times are available on the website. You can also read more about Walker’s story on their website or on this College of Arts & Sciences feature story here. |
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Neave Trio performs Dmitri Volkov’s Piano Trio Neave Trio performed Piano Trio, by sophomore Dmitri Volkov, at the 2022 Mostly Modern Festival. A video recording of the performance can be found here, and the audio can be downloaded from the composer’s website, at dmitrivolkov.com. A score video will also be made available soon! |
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Chun-Wai Wong’s music selected for the 68th International Rostrum of Composers Chun-Wai Wong’s orchestral piece Labyrinth Collapses is being featured in the 68th International Rostrum of Composers held in Italy. The recording is taken from the premiere by maestro Jaap van Zweden with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. The piece serves as a critical reflection of humanity and society. The continuous intertwinement of the main motive and its variants form a musical labyrinth. In addition, several subtle references to masterpieces from the early 20th century give underlying messages – they constitute another layer of a “labyrinth.” The piece represents one of the composer’s continuous efforts to fuse (late) Romanticism with modern trends. For more, please visit here. |
Faculty News |
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Summer Activities for Prof. David Dzubay Dzubay taught his New Music Conducting course at IU (this will be offered again in May/June 2023) and taught at the Brevard Music Center Virtual Composition Institute, which included five reading sessions (3 with large orchestra, 1 with band and 1 with chamber orchestra) and five chamber concerts along with lessons and daily seminars. Following Brevard, Dzubay went to Colombia for a week, where he taught composition masterclasses and conducted the National Symphony August 11 in a program of five works by young Colombian composers (modeled after IU’s New Voices for Orchestra concert); recordings from the week will be released on Spotify. In his own work, Dzubay extracted the Whitman portions of Autumn Rivulets into a stand-alone worked called Sea of Time, and completed a wind ensemble version of FLOW, his Concerto for Flute and Percussion which will be premiered by Eugene Corporon and the UNT Wind Symphony in October. |
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John Gibson has Upcoming Performances and Talks John Gibson will present edgewater, his audiovisual piece, at the College Music Society national conference in Long Beach, California this month. He will also give a talk there about his Max software package, Auzzie. His fixed-media work, In Summer Rain, will be on the program at the IRCAM Forum at NYU in New York City, where he will give a talk about his spectral recomposition software. The IU New Music Ensemble will premiere Fire Clouds, his new piece for sinfonietta and electronics on their first concert. The Seoul International Computer Music Festival has selected edgewater for its program in October. |
Upcoming Events |
(* Starred events are REQUIRED for IU composition students) |