Composition Division News

The following is a listing of recent accomplishments and activities by students, alumni, and faculty of the UNT composition program. Items are listed in reverse chronological order and may be filtered using the menus below:

Faculty composer Joseph Klein has been named as one of two 2016-17 Faculty Fellows from the UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts. Klein will use his fellowship in the spring of 2017 to complete his large-scale modular chamber work, An Unaware Cosmos, to be premiered at UNT in January 2018.
Works by graduate composers Bihe Wen and Michael Smith, as well as alumnus Dave Gedosh (DMA 2009), are among 24 works selected from 289 submissions from around the world for the ARS ELECTRONICA FORUM WALLIS 2016, to be held in Switzerland this May.
Stephen Lucas has had an unprecedented streak of album releases over the last several months, resulting in over 20 solo albums under the moniker "Stephen Lucas Live at Brussels." His most successful publication received a positive review from the American rock band Stone Temple Pilots (STP) on major social media outlets. His long-time/distance collaborator/engineer Dairy Tade was recently nominated by the Panini Quartet to be the most successful dairy farmer/engineer in Northwest England.
Undergraduate Composer Sam Mikulewicz's work Himawari was selected for performance at the April 2016 Sound Of Dragon Chinese Music Festival in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Sam was one of ten composers selected among entries from twelve countries, and the only American composer whose work was selected for performance.
Undergraduate composer Ryan Ayres received Second Prize in the Voices of Change Young Composers Competition for his work twitch; composition alumnus Blake Turner (BM 2014) received an Honorable Mention for his work Elusive Trails.
Doctoral composer Ermir Bejo received a 2016 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his work Opus 4 for solo piano. Ermir was one of 15 recipients from a pool of over 700 submissions for this prestigious award. Composition alumnus Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) was also named among the finalists.
Faculty composer Panayotis Kokoras will present the keynote lecture and a concert of his works at the National Student Electronic Music Event (N_SEME) on 25-26 March 2016 at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK.
Elizabeth McNutt performed four works, including two by UNT faculty, at the International Computer Music Conference, hosted by UNT. She recently received a grant from the Earle Brown Music Foundation, in support of her series Sounds Modern, for upcoming performances in Dallas and Fort Worth (2016 and 2017). Her recent collaborations include premieres by Andrew May and local composer Sungji Hong.
Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) was one of four composers selected by the choral ensemble Magpies and Ravens for their LINEAGE program. Daniel will receive mentoring from composer Paul Rudoi and the ensemble, culminating in two performances of his work Delbaré for SATB a cappella choir on 12-13 March 2016 in Minneapolis, MN.
Glint for solo tenor trombone by alumna Lisa Bost-Sandberg (DMA in flute performance, 2014; related field in composition) won the 2016 American Trombone Workshop Composition Competition and was performed at the Workshop in Arlington, Virginia, on 12 March 2016.
David Stout has co-founded a working group at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) with ecologist and complexity scientist, Dr. Jennifer Dunn. The Ecological Data Dramatization Art & Science working group will focus on the dramatization of ecological data sets integrating sonification, visualization and immersive staging. The project commences in March 2016 and will bring together the Santa Fe Institute and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) with the University of North Texas and the University of Denver. PhD composition student Stephen Lucas will be joining for the first session in the IAIA immersive dome.
Seven UNT-affiliated composers were selected to participate in the SEAMUS 2016 Conference at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA, 11-13 February 2016: faculty composer Andrew May; student composer Timothy Harenda; and alumni composers Elainie Lillios, Chapman Welch, David Gedosh, Jason Fick, and Eli Fieldsteel.
Alumnus composer Greg Dixon (PhD 2012) received a commission from the Instruments India Composition Commission, sponsored by Liverpool Hope University and Milapfest, Britain’s leading Indian arts development trust. The commission grants Dixon exclusive access to a sound library of traditional Indian instruments that he will use to create new music. Dixon will write a set of short musical works that will be scheduled for concert performance this summer in England. To coincide with these compositions, Dixon will also build a custom, computer-based prayer machine (a portable sound loop playback device, traditionally used for prayer or meditation) to play back his compositions.
Pittsburgh-based ensemble-in-residence of Heinz Chapel, OvreArts, performed alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei's wind trio Upon Viewing a Family In Mourning on 21 January 2016 in the Heinz Chapel.
A recording of An Unaware Cosmos, a modular cycle of mixed chamber works by faculty composer Joseph Klein was published in the January issue of ink&coda, an online journal of prose and music.
Doctoral composer Timothy Harenda has been selected as one of four finalists in the 2016 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition, for his work Purple Quartz. Winners will be announced at the SEAMUS conference in February.
New Motive Power, a work by undergraduate composer Brandon Maahs, received an Honorable Mention in the Texas A&M University Composition Competition and Symposium, one of the final three from among 46 submissions.
The premiere performance of May 29 - June 9 for string orchestra and string quintet by alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) was presented by the Youth Symphony Orchestra "Slobozhanskiy," commissioned and conducted by Eldred Marshall on 20 November 2015 in Kharkov, Ukraine at the Kharkov State Performance Hall.
Doctoral composer Seth Shafer has been invited to present his paper "Temporal Models in Live-Generative Music Notation" at the second New Music Conference and Festival (NUNC! 2) in November 2015 at the Bienen School of Music on the campus of Northwestern University.
Lockjaw, a brass quintet by undergraduate composer Brandon Maahs, was selected to be premiered at the 2015 Vox Novus Festival on 24 October 2015 at Symphony Space in New York City by the Nautilus Brass Quintet.