Alumnus composer Seth Shafer (PhD 2017) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music Technology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, beginning in the fall of 2017.

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 October 2018.

UNT faculty artist David Stout, Cory Metcalf and Reilly Donovan premiered a new virtual reality installation titled Vesica Pisces at the CURRENTS International New Media Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June 2017. 

Alumnus composer Ilya Rostovtsev (MM 2010) has completed his PhD in Music Composition at UC Berkeley (August 2017), and has accepted a position at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) for the position of an Applied Scientist, where he will be working on new music authoring tools.

Alumnus composer Ben Johansen (PhD 2012) has been appointed Lecturer in Composition/Music Technology at Baylor University, beginning in the fall of 2017.

Alumnus Composer Jonathan Camacho (BA 2008) recently composed the complete soundtrack to the film What Carter Lost, which premiered on ESPN on 24 August 2017 as a part of the Emmy Award Winning 30 for 30 series on ESPN. The film focuses on the 1988 Dallas Carter High School Football team that was featured in the movie Friday Night Lights. What Carter Lost can be seen on rotation on ESPN, as well as on the ESPN App and the ESPN 30 for 30 website. 

Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) recently received a commission from the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) for a new work for soprano, baritone, and piano to be performed on their Next concert series. The performance will be on 11 December 2017 in NYC at the CUNY Graduate Center inside the Elebash Recital Hall as part of the Bernstein Marathon, celebrating his 100th anniversary.

NoiseFold (UNT faculty artist David Stout and Cory Metcalf) exhibited "Transform Series One," a show of glass sculpture utilizing generative digital techniques to visualize virtual vessels, at the Form & Concept Gallery in Santa Fe (July 2017). NoiseFold's glass plasma sculptures were recently featured in New Glass Review (38), published by the Corning Museum of Glass.  This work was made possible by an invitation for a guest artist residency at the Pilchuck Glass School, where Stout and Metcalf worked with two of Dale Chihuly's gaffers to create a large body of work in glass, and taught a class in "Transcoding Glass." 

Alumnus composer Joshua Harris (PhD 2013) composed the soundtrack for the film King Rat, which premiered at the Indy Film Fest in Indianapolis in July 2017. The film won the festival's Audience Award.  Also in July 2017, Harris' work Aubade for flute and electroacoustic music was selected for performance at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, where it was performed by UNT alumna Wayla Chambo.

Graduate composers Michael Smith, Jacob Thiede, Bihe Wen, and Jinghong Zhang will have works presented and performed at the National Student Electronic Music Event (NSEME 2017), 10-11 March 2017 at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA.

Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei (BM 2014) was recently selected as a composer fellow for the 2017 Intimacy of Creativity Festival in Hong Kong. Daniel will be working in collaboration with Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir, co-founder/associate artistic director of the New York Festival of Song, Michael Barrett, acclaimed tenor Jonathan Blalock, and internationally renowned composer and artistic director of IC 2017 Bright Sheng on performances of his cycle, Four Glimpses of Desire (چهار نگاه اجمالی ازهوس) (2016).

Alumnus composer Daniel Sabzghabaei's 2017 POLYPHONOS commission work The Blue Booby, on a text from James Tate, will be performed three times (6-8 October 2017) by Seattle's leading choral ensemble The Esoterics on their concert GRAVITAS: Investigating Gravity.

Faculty composer Joseph Klein will present an academic paper titled "Practical Applications of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form on Musical Materials and Structures" at the On Growth and Form Centenary Conference, 13-15 October 2017 at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland).  The paper includes an analysis of three original compositions that are related to Thompson's research: the road in its unfoldings, Occam's Razor, and Interstices.  Klein has also been invited to present a lecture on his work at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.   

NoiseFold (UNT faculty artist David Stout and Cory Metcalf) presented The Ten Thousand Things at Southern Oregon University, Oregon Center for the Arts, where they were joined by the Left Edge Collective (former UNT faculty composer David Bithell, trumpet and electronics; and Terry Longshore, percussion) in May 2017.

Faculty Composer Andrew May’s composition Abstraction with Reference has been selected for performance on 10 March 2017 in the Open Space Festival of New Music at the University of Northern Colorado (Greeley, CO).